John Jacob Abel the position of chair of the department until he retired at the age of 75 in 1932. Ever since his early years in Europe, Abel showed great interest in isolating pure form of internal gland hormones. The first work that led to his international reputation as a pharmacologist and biochemist was the isolation of epinephrine from adrenal medulla. However, he was only able to isolate a monobenzoyl derivative of epinephrine. While he was improving his processes on decomposing the benzoyl derivative to obtain salts of epinephrine using saponification, a Japanese chemist J. Takamine, who had visited his lab, was able
John Jacob Abel time on proteins—proteins were considered as unlikely to have such highly specific physiological activity shown by a hormone such as insulin. In 1927, he was published in the journal Science for this work with a paper entitled "Chemistry in Relation to Biology and Medicine with Especial Reference to Insulin and Other Hormones". At the time, Abel's laboratory was no doubt the center of insulin research in the United States. A lot of young scientists came to his lab and worked under Abel to study the newly crystallized hormone. Abel himself gradually withdrew from the actual experimental work on insulin after