Tribute to Henrik Dam a Danish biochemist and physiologist and the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1943

Carl Peter Henrik Dam , (21 February 1895 – 17 April 1976) was a Danish biochemist and physiologist.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1943 for joint work with Edward Doisy in discovering vitamin K and
its role in human physiology. Dam's key experiment involved feeding a cholesterol-free diet to chickens. He

initially replicated experiments reported by scientists at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC). McFarlane,

Graham and Richardson, working on the chick feed program at OAC, had used chloroform to remove all fat from chick

chow. They noticed that chicks fed only fat-depleted chow developed hemorrhages and started bleeding from tag

sites. Dam found that these defects could not be restored by adding purified cholesterol to the diet. It appeared

that—together with the cholesterol—a second compound had been extracted from the food, and this compound was

called the coagulation vitamin. The new vitamin received the letter K because the initial discoveries were

reported in a German journal, in which it was designated as Koagulationsvitamin.

Between 1942 and 1945 Dam was a senior research associate at the University of Rochester; it was during this

period that he was awarded the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In 1951, he was one of seven Nobel

Laureates who attended the first Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.[