Todd, Sir Alexander Robertus

Todd, Sir Alexander Robertus,

1907–97, Scottish biochemist, Ph.D., Univ. of Frankfurt am Main, 1931; Oxford, 1933. Todd held posts at Edinburgh Univ. (1934–36), the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, Chelsea (1936–37), the Univ. of London (1937–38), and the Univ. of Manchester (1938–44). He then taught at Cambridge, where he was a professor from 1944 to 1971. In 1957 Todd was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on nucleotidesnucleotide
, organic substance that serves as a monomer in forming nucleic acids. Nucleotides consist of either a purine or a pyrimidine base, a ribose or deoxyribose, and a phosphate group. Adenosine triphosphate serves as the principle energy carrier for the cell's reactions.
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 and nucleotide coenzymes. He is credited with establishing the chemical makeup of these compounds, which form the structural units of DNA and RNA (see nucleic acidnucleic acid,
any of a group of organic substances found in the chromosomes of living cells and viruses that play a central role in the storage and replication of hereditary information and in the expression of this information through protein synthesis.
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).