Earl W. Sutherland Jr.

In 1937, soon after acquiring his B. Sc. Degree from Washburn College, Sutherland married Mildred Rice. The couple had two sons and two daughters. Their marriage ended in a divorce in 1962.

In 1964, Sutherland married Claudia Sebeste Smith, who at that time was working as the assistant dean at the Vanderbilt University. They shared many interests and often went out on fishing trips. The couple remained married until his death in 1974.

Sutherland died on 9 March, 1974 in Miami Florida from massive esophageal hemorrhage that occurred due to some complication in surgery. His remains were buried in Burlingame City Cemetery, Burlingame, Kansas.

Earl Wilber Sutherland Jr. was born on 19 November 1915, in Burlingame, Kansas. His father, Earl W. Sutherland Senior, was initially a farmer in New Mexico and Oklahoma. Later he shifted to Burlingame, where he opened a store and ran dry goods business for forty years.

Earl grew up under the direct supervision of his mother, Edith M. Hartshorn, who had her education at a ‘ladies’ college’ and some practical training in nursing. He was the fifth of his parents’ six children.

Initially they were quite well off and lived in a spacious house. Later, as the great depression of 1929 set in, their financial condition deteriorated. Nonetheless, Earl had a very comfortable childhood and had his schooling at Burlingame Junior/Senior High School, graduating from there in 1932.

During his school days, he was a keen sportsman and was especially good in tennis. Fishing was also another of his favorite activity. He also spent a lot of time swimming and hunting small animals like rabbits and squirrels with his own shot gun.

In 1933, Sutherland enrolled at the Washburn College in Topeka, graduating from there in 1937 with a degree in Bachelor of Science. With the fall in the family’s fortune, he had to support his college education by working as an orderly at a local hospital. Perhaps, it was here that he decided to become a doctor.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Sutherland returned to the University of Washington at St. Louis. At that time, he could not make up his mind if he should go into practice or devote himself to research. Finally Cori was able to convince him to go into medical research.

Accordingly, Sutherland joined the Biochemistry Department of Washington University Medical School in 1945 as an Instructor in Pharmacology.From 1946 to 1950, he functioned as an Instructor in Biochemistry, from 1950 to 1952 as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and from 1952 to 1953 as an Associate Professor in Biochemistry.

The stint at the University of Washington was highly productive for Sutherland. Here, he worked with Christian de Duve on the actions of hormone at the molecular level and established that hyperglycemic-glycogenolytic, later renamed glucagon, came from the alpha cells of Langerhans. He thus established that glucagon was a hormone.

Over time, Sutherland became an independent researcher and began to make intense study of enzyme phosphorylase. He made several discoveries on the metabolism of glycogen and helped to identify the importance of liver phosphorylase (LP) in the process of glycogenolysis.

In 1953, soon after his work on LP, he was offered the post of a full professor at the Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) University. Accordingly, he shifted to Ohio and joined the institution as the Professor of Pharmacology in its School of Medicine. Later, he became the Director of the Department.

Sutherland is best remembered for his discovery of cyclic adenosine monophosphate. After years of experimenting, he and his team established that cyclic AMP is a ‘second messenger system’ and has important functions in many biological processes.

While working with liver phosphorylase at Western Reserve University, he and his team observed an unknown heat stable factor being produced in the presence of the hormones like epinephrine and glucagon. Later they observed that the factor provided stimulation for formation of liver phosphorylase.

This factor was later termed cyclic AMP. He also showed that effects of hormones like glucagon and adrenaline, which cannot pass through the plasma membrane, is transferred into cells with the help of this cyclic AMP.