The discovery of ATP, the body's energy molecule
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Was ATP discovered by Yellapragada Subbarow at Harvard or by Karl Lohmann in Germany in 1929?
Independent discoveriesMedicine & health
Indian claim
Yellapragada Subbarow, working with Cyrus Fiske at Harvard, found phosphocreatine and ATP in muscle in the late 1920s. He later led work at Lederle on folic acid and the cancer drug methotrexate.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Fiske and Subbarow published on the phosphorus compounds of muscle in Science in 1929; their 1925 Fiske–Subbarow method for measuring phosphorus became one of the most cited methods in biochemistry.
- Subbarow's team at Lederle made the folic acid antagonists aminopterin and methotrexate; Sidney Farber's use of aminopterin in children with leukaemia helped start cancer chemotherapy.
Commonly credited to
Textbooks usually credit Karl Lohmann in Germany with discovering ATP in 1929.
Evidence for the other claim
- Lohmann published his identification of ATP in 1929 as well, and historians generally see the two discoveries as made independently.
What historians and scientists say
ATP was found at almost the same time by Fiske and Subbarow in the US and by Lohmann in Germany. Subbarow's share is now widely acknowledged, though he received little public credit in his lifetime.