Nobel Prize Recipient. James Batcheller Sumner, an American biochemist, received international professional recognition after being awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He received half of the monetary award, while Wendell M. Stanley and John Howard Northrop jointly shared the other half of the coveted award. He received 18 nominations for the Nobel candidacy. Born the son of a wealthy gentleman farmer on a large estate, he attended private schools with an interest only in science. Although he had to travel by train and walked two miles one way, his father provided him with the best scientific education available. While hunting at the age of seventeen, he accidently received a gunshot wound in his left arm, which resulted in a below the elbow amputation. Being left-handed, he had to relearn doing everything with his right hand, but excel in sports after the amputation. Becoming a life-long sportsman, he played tennis after age sixty and ice skated the winter before his death. His family came from England to New England with the Puritans. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1910, publishing his first scientific paper as a senior. After graduation, he was employed for a summer at a cotton knitting factory, which was owned by an uncle. Gaining confidence, he accepted a teaching position at Mt. Allison College at Sackville, New Brunswick in Canada. In 1912 he returned to Harvard University studying biochemistry at the Medical School. He graduated with a Ph. D. degree in 1914. His thesis for the doctorate degree was "The Formation of Urea in the Animal Body," with part of the paper being published in the "Journal of Biological Chemistry." After being stranded during a tour in Switzerland for some weeks at the start of World War I, a much-sought-after post as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Cornell Medical School in Ithaca, New York was held for him until he returned. Beginning in 1917 while at Cornell, he researched a new theory of isolating enzymes in a pure form. Eventually, he successfully isolated the enzyme urease in the legume, Jack Beans, in 1926 and crystallized the enzyme. His results were published in the "Journal of Biological Chemistry" in August of 1926. Receiving a full professorship in 1929, he spent his career at Cornell University. In 1937 he received the Guggenheim Fellowship, studying in Sweden for five months and receiving the Scheele Award. While in Sweden, he studied with 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient, Hans von Euler-Chelpin, and 1926 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient, Theodor H.E. Svedberg. Both of these scientists nominated him for the Nobel Prize candidacy. He became the Director of Cornell University's enzyme chemistry laboratory in 1947. Among the many societies, which he belonged, he was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1948 and a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1949. Besides the over 125 published papers, he authored or co-authored "The Textbook of Biological Chemistry" in 1927; "The Chemistry and Methods of Enzymes" in 1943 with three editions; "Laboratory Experiments in Biological Chemistry" in 1944; and in several volumes in nearly 3,000 pages, "The Enzymes, Chemistry and Mechanism of Action" from 1951 to 1952. Sumner was an excellent linguist, reading and speaking German, French, and Swedish. While at Cornell University in 1915, he married a medical student, who would become a well-known author, Cid Ricketts Sumner. According to the Nobel biography, they had six children yet only four lived to adulthood. After 15 years of marriage, they divorced, and he remarried for a second time in 1931 to a Swedish lady, which he divorced in 1943. In 1944 he remarried and the couple had two sons with one dying age four. In early 1955 he had made plans to organize an enzyme research program at the Medical School of the University of Minas Gerais in Brazil for a year's stay, but cancelled his plans when his health declined. He died from cancer in August of the same year.