Blacks Who Should Have Won Nobel Prizes
- By
MadameNoire
3. Herman Branson (1914-1995)
Nobel Prize in Physics
Branson was co-inventor of the alpha helix in protein structure, and deserved a share of the Nobel prize in physics. Reportedly, the alpha helix was his discovery. Branson, who became president of Lincoln University, gave his account of the discovery in a 1984 letter, saying that in 1948-49, while working for Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology, Branson did research on how amino acids could be arranged in a protein molecule. A year later, Pauling wrote up the discovery and credited Branson and another scientist as coauthors. Pauling later became a Nobel laureate.
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