John Jacob Abel to successfully isolate the neutral base of epinephrine by adding ammonium to highly concentrated extract, a method Abel himself tried but failed due to the use of low concentration of extract. After Takamine's success, Abel himself remarked, with great candor, "The efforts of years on my part in this once mysterious field of suprarenal, medullary biochemistry, marred by blunders as they were, eventuated, then, in the isolation of the hormone not in the form of the free base but in that of its monobenzoyl derivative." Together with L.G. Rowntree and B.B. Turner, Abel devised what they called a "vividiffusion" apparatus,
John Jacob Abel Abel near Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Ph.B. (Bachelor of Philosophy) from the University of Michigan where he studied with Henry Sewall in 1883. But, during this time he took several years off to serve as a principal of the high school in La Porte, Indiana. There he taught many subjects ranging from chemistry and physics to Latin. He then went to Johns Hopkins University, where he studied under Henry Newell Martin, a cardiac physiologist and professor of biology. He then left for Europe, starting in Leipzig studying medical sciences, then traveling to Strasbourg where he was about to receive