Name Earl Davie Fields Biochemistry | ||
Institutions University of Washington Education University of Washington (B.S., Ph.D.) | ||
Institution University of Washington | ||
Earl Warren Davie (born 1927) is an American biochemist. He is a professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of Washington. Davie studies the blood proteins involved in coagulation and was among the first scientists to describe the steps of the clotting process. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Biography
Davie was born in 1927 in Tacoma, Washington. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1950. He completed a Ph.D. there in 1954. During his doctoral studies, Davie worked with Hans Neurath to learn about protein structure and function. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Fritz Lipmann at Harvard Medical School, Davie worked at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine from 1957 to 1962, where he met hematologist Oscar Ratnoff, the discoverer of Hageman factor (later known as factor XII). He then returned to the University of Washington, later chairing the biochemistry department for several years.
Davie has made significant research contributions to the understanding of coagulation. Davie and Ratnoff described the sequence of steps in the clotting cascade. Davie and Ratnoff published their clotting cascade model in 1964, around the same time that Robert Gwyn Macfarlane of the University of Oxford produced a similar model. Davie cofounded a biotechnology company, ZymoGenetics, in 1981. The company was purchased by Novo Nordisk several years later; in 2000, ZymoGenetics was recreated as an independent company and it was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2010.
In 1980, Davie was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. In 1993, Davie awarded the Stratton Medal from the American Society of Hematology; he was named a Legend in Hematology by the society in 2008. The Centre for Blood Research at the University of British Columbia established the Earl W. Davie Symposium in his honor.