Home » Science & Nature » Biographies of Scientists » Paul D. Boyer - ATP and Cellular Energy

Paul D. Boyer - ATP and Cellular Energy

© Jackie DiGiovanni

Paul D. Boyer - ATP and Cellular Energy

Paul Boyer was born July 31, 1918, in Provo, Utah. His father, Dell Delos Boyer, was an osteopathic physician. His mother, Grace, was a homemaker; she died when Boyer was 15. Boyer was one of eight children and remembers the Great Depression impacting his youth. He also remembers close-knit neighborhoods, outdoor activities, and excelling academically. He skipped grades and graduated Provo High School at age 16, being both the valedictorian and senior class president.

Boyer attended Brigham Young University in his hometown and studied chemistry and mathematics; he graduated in 1939 with a BS in chemistry. He married Lyda Whicker, a fellow student, during the summer after graduation. With his Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Scholarship, the Boyers moved to Madison, Wisconsin where he began graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, while she became the working wife. Through his studies and lab work, Boyer encountered a great deal of research on enzymes and metabolism. He received a PhD in Biochemistry in 1943.

Boyer accepted a job with the Committee on Medical Research at Stanford University and did research on blood plasma proteins. This was during World War II when the availability of safe blood supplies was especially urgent.

At the end of the project, Boyer accepted a position as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. His job was put on hold for a year when he was drafted into the US Navy, where he worked in a laboratory at the Navy Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Upon returning to Minnesota in 1948, Boyer combined teaching and research. He is known for giving great credit to the graduate students and postdoctoral associates in his research group. In 1956, Boyer became a Hill Foundation Professor at the medical school within the University of Minnesota.

In 1963, he brought his research group to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was named a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and continued his research on enzymes. In 1965, Boyer became Director of the newly formed Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA. In 1971, a breakthrough occurred that recognized a key mechanism in the formation of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Later breakthroughs followed as ATP came to be understood as the key to the energy within cells by which all biological reactions are driven.

Boyer has been generous with his time and energy and has traveled widely, meeting with other scientists, and sharing information about his work throughout six decades of enzyme research. When he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997, he used some of the prize money to set up funds at UCLA, the