Thomas Osborne studied proteins for nearly 40 years. At the time, it had been generally believed that there were only a few types of proteins, but Osborne’s work clearly showed this to be untrue. With Lafayette Benedict Mendel, his carefully controlled rat feeding studies showed that proteins differ in nutritional value because of differences in contents of essential amino acids.
References:
- National Academy of Sciences Memoir by Hubert Bradford Vickery
- obituary in Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine
- obituary in Journal of Nutrition
- memorial by Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station
- paper about Osborne’s and Mendel’s work on amino acids
- obituary from American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- Osborne’s place in the history of protein chemistry by Joseph S. Fruton
