Chemistry, Math, and Such.

Some Called Her Miss Menten Rebecca Skloot

     Through the ice of winters and the balmy warmth of summers from 1918 to 1950, Maud Menten lurched through Shadyside and Oakland in her Model T Ford. After her jackrabbit starts, she would settle behind a wheel far taller and wider than she was, leaning slightly forward, wearing her Paris hats, blue dresses withstained-glass hues, and Buster Brown shoes. She never knew exactly which pedal to push when. Oh heavens, she would say, now, is it the middle or right one to stop and the left one to go, or middle to go, left to stop? She wasn’t sure, so she would push them all. Folks said she made up with enthusiasm and quick starts what she lacked in driving skill, and they knew to stay out of her way. On the road it was for fear of losing their lives, but elsewhere, it was because they knew she was unstoppable. Driving her Model T was about the only thing Menten couldn’t do. And if anyone tried to talk her out of anything—Arctic expeditions or mountain climbing or solving one of the most complex biochemical problems of the twentieth century—Menten, whose petite frame and sea-blue eyes projected only tenderness, would smile sweetly and keep right on doing it her way. 

     People probably tried to talk her out of boarding a ship alone and heading for Germany the year the Titanic sank; of course she went. She wanted to work with Leonor Michaelis, a wellknown biochemist. Menten, who eventually became a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and head of pathology at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, worked with Michaelis to demystify enzyme kinetics—the study of rates and mechanisms of enzymatic reactions. They developed a tool that would become pivotal in the history of biochemistry: the Michaelis-Menten Equation. The equation, which provides a mathematical means for determining the rate of an enzyme reaction, has been called the foundation ofmodern enzymology, and it is a standard for most subsequent enzyme-kinetic measurements. Moreover, the development of most drugs in this century would not have been possible without that understanding. When Michaelis and Menten published their work in 1913, little was known about enzymes, including their basic chemical nature.