Edward Adelbert Doisy

Doisy grew up in Hume, Illinois, took degrees at the University of Illinois and Harvard, and by 1919 had landed at Washington University School of Medicine. In 1923 he moved to Saint Louis University to chair a new biochemistry department, a post he held until retirement in 1965. In 1930 he and Adolf Butenandt independently isolated estrone — Butenandt got a Nobel for it in 1939; Doisy did not. A decade later came the work that did win: the isolation and structural determination of vitamin K, the molecule that makes blood clot. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1938, he died in 19…