Edward A. Doisy, Nobel Winner for Discovery of Vitamin K, Dies

Edward Adelbert Doisy, a biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for isolating Vitamin K, has died at age 92.

Doisy died Thursday at University Hospital of heart disease. He was working at St. Louis University in 1938 when he and Danish researcher Henrick Dam isolated Vitamin K, which stimulates the production of prothrombin as a major element in blood clotting.

The two received the Nobel Prize five years later in a ceremony held in New York City rather than Stockholm because of World War II.

Earlier, he isolated estrone, a sex hormone, and later identified estradiol, a more powerful female hormone. The two discoveries spurred research in the field of endocrinology, opening it to research in organic chemistry that led eventually to his work in isolating Vitamin K.

Doisy received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois and joined the Washington University School of Medicine’s faculty in 1919 before moving to St. Louis University in 1924.

With his wife, Margaret, he recently pledged $1 million for expansion and renovation of the Pius XII Memorial Library on the St. Louis University campus. The expansion is to be dedicated next week. Previously established was Doisy Hall, a research wing at the university’s medical school.