Medi-Centre - Dr. Maud Menten


267 Dundas Street, Suite 202 \| London, Ontario \| N6A 1H2 \| Phone: 519.488.2003 Fax: 519.488.2999 \| Email: cmhf@cdnmedhall.org

	Dr. Maud Menten Born: March 20, 1879 Birthplace: Port Lambton, Ontario Died: July 20, 1960
		One of the first Canadian women to earn a medical degree (1913)
		Devised the "Michaelis-Menten Equation"-- a basic formula applied in the study of enzymeS

	Bio
	Dr. Menten's contributions to science began with her work in 1913 in the laboratory of L. Michaelis in Berlin, where they collaborated on a famous paper on chemical kinetics which presented the world with the 'Michaelis-Menten Constant'. In 1916 she joined the Department of Pathology at the School of Medicine of the University of Pittsburgh where she taught and practiced until her retirement in 1950. Dr. Menten was an avid researcher all her life: in 1924 she discovered the hyperglycemic effects of salmonella toxins, in 1944 she determined the sedimentation constants and the electrophoretic mobilities of adult and fetal carboxyl hemoglobin, and she developed an azo-dye coupling reaction to demonstrate alkaline phosphotase in the kidney.

	SideFx
	Biochemistry is the study of the chemical nature of living things and of the chemical reactions that maintain the life of a cell. Proteins called enzymes control these chemical reactions and Dr. Menten's 1913 formula gave scientists a way to record how enzymes worked.
	Knowledge of enzymes has developed enormously, but the equation is still fundamental: where v is the measured rate of the reaction and s is the concentratin of the substrate. V is a constant depending on the amount of enzyme present and K is the constant characteristic of a given enzyme-substrate pair.
	Other pioneering women doctors, also Canadian Medical Hall of Fame Laureates, include Leonora Howard King and Maude Abbott.