Sutherland, Earl Wilbur, Jr (1915–1974)

US physiologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1971 for his discovery of cyclic AMP, a chemical messenger that plays a role in the action of many hormones.

Sutherland was born in Burlingame, Kansas, and studied at Washburn College, Topeka, and Washington University Medical School, St Louis. He was director of the Department of Medicine at Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) University in Cleveland in 1953–63, then moved to Vanderbilt University, Nashville, and in 1973 to the University of Miami Medical School.

Sutherland began studying hormones at Washington under biochemists Carl and Gerty Cori and then spent the 1950s doing research on his own. At that time it was thought that hormones, carried in the bloodstream, activated their target organs directly. Sutherland showed that the key to the process – the activating agent of the organ concerned – is cyclic adenosine 3,5 monophosphate (cyclic AMP). The arrival of a hormone increases the organ's cellular level of cyclic AMP, which in turn triggers or inhibits the cellular activity.