James B. Sumner

His first was with Bertha Louise Ricketts, an American novelist, on July 10, 1915 whom he later divorced in 1930. He had four children from this marriage. He had two daughters named Roberta and Prudence.

His second wife was Agnes Paulina Lundkvist whom he married in 1931 and also divorced later. He did not have any children from this marriage.

His third marriage was with Mary Morrison in 1943 and he had two children from this marriage.

James B. Sumner was born on November 19, 1887 in Canton, Massachusetts, USA. His ancestors were from Bicester, England who had immigrated to Boston, US in 1636.

His father Charles Sumner was a cotton manufacturer and his mother was Elizabeth Rand Kelly Sumner. He had a sister named Amie Sumner.

His grandfather owned a farm and a cotton factory while his father owned a large estate.

He initially attended the Eliot Grammar School for a few years during his schooldays.

Later on he went to the ‘Roxbury Latin School, West Roxbury, Massachusetts’.

James B. Sumner started working at his uncle’s cotton knitting factory after getting his bachelor’s degree but he soon lost interest in the work.

He joined as a teacher of Chemistry and Physiology at the ‘Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada’ where he worked from 1910 to 1911.

He did an assistantship in chemistry at the ‘Worcester Polytechnic Institute’ from 1911 to 1912.

Sumner was in Switzerland at the outbreak of the First World War when he received an invitation to teach Biochemistry at the ‘Cornell Medical School, Ithaca, NY’. He worked there from 1914 to 1929.

During the early stages of his research he was awarded an American-Belgian fellowship in 1921. He decided to go to Brussels and work with Jean Effront who was an authority on enzymes. This plan was unsuccessful as Effront thought that Sumner’s method of isolating the ‘unrease’ enzyme was highly doubtful.

James B. Sumner published his first book ‘Textbook of Biological Chemistry’ in 1927.

In 1943 he published his second book ‘The Chemistry and Methods of Enzymes’ with G. Fred Somers. His second book with Somers was ‘Laboratory Experiments in Biological Chemistry’ which came out in 1944.

His fourth book ‘The Enzymes: Chemistry and Mechanism of Action’ with Karl Myrback was published in four volumes in 1951-52.