Merrifield, Bruce

Bruce Merrifield, in full Robert Bruce Merrifield, (born July 15, 1921, Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.—died May 14, 2006, Cresskill, N.J.), American biochemist and educator, who in 1984 received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of a simple and ingenious method for synthesizing chains of amino acids, or polypeptides, in any predetermined order.

Merrifield graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1943 and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry there in 1949. That same year he joined the staff of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), New York City, where he became professor emeritus in 1992.

Merrifield’s innovative method, developed during the 1950s and ’60s, grew from his idea that the key to the synthesis of polypeptides was the anchoring of the first amino acid to an insoluble solid. Other amino acids could then be joined, one by one, to the fixed terminus. At the end of the sequence of steps, the completed chain could be easily detached from the solid. The process, which can be carried out by machine, proved highly efficient and of great significance for research on such substances as hormones and enzymes, as well as in the commercial manufacture of such drugs as insulin and such substances as interferon. Merrifield’s autobiography, Life During a Golden Age of Peptide Chemistry, was published in 1993.