1. William Jencks was noted particularly for his work on enzymes, using concepts drawn from organic chemistry to understand their mechanisms.
13 Facts About William Jencks
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William Jencks conducted his first postdoctoral research for two years with Fritz Lipmann at Harvard Medical School.
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William Jencks was drafted into the Army Medical Corps and was assigned to the Army Medical Service Graduate School at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC.
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William Jencks was particularly well known for studies of the reaction of nucleophiles with carbon.
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William Jencks proposed that enzymes use ground state destabilization, termed the Circe Effect, to increase the reactivity of their bound substrates.
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William Jencks published close to 400 scientific papers during his career.
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William Jencks was a co-founder of the biannual Winter Enzyme Mechanisms Conference.
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William Jencks was memorialized at the 20th Enzyme Mechanisms Meeting in St Pete Beach, Florida, several days after his death.
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William Jencks was a recipient of the 1962 American Chemical Society Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, the 1993 American Society of Biological Chemists Award, the 1995 American Chemical Society James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, and the 1996 American Chemical Society Repligen Corporation Award in Chemistry of Biological Processes.
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William Jencks was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1971.
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William Jencks was a foreign member of the Royal Society and a member of the American Philosophical Society.
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William Jencks's father, Gardner Platt William Jencks, was a pianist and composer.
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William Jencks attended the Calvert School, and completed high school from St Paul's School near Baltimore.