Dam, Carl Peter Henrik

Born Feb. 21, 1895, in Copenhagen; died there Apr. 24, 1976. Danish biochemist. Member of the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters and of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences.

Dam graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Copenhagen in 1920. In 1923 he began teaching biochemistry at the physiology laboratory of the University of Copenhagen, and from 1931 to 1941 he was an assistant professor at the university’s Institute of Biochemistry. In 1941 he became a professor of biochemistry at the Polytechnic Institute in Copenhagen. In 1941, Dam was associated with the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole in the USA; from 1942 to 1945 he was a research associate at the University of Rochester, and from 1945 to 1948 he was an associate member of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. From 1956 to 1962 he was head of the Biological Division of the Danish Fat Research Institute.

Dam discovered vitamin K, and his principal works dealt with the isolation, purification, physical and chemical properties, and biological functions of the vitamin. Dam received a Nobel Prize in 1943.