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 Professor of Pharmacology at Columbia University, for help on founding a scientific journal on biochemistry. Together as joint editors, Abel and Herter established the "Journal of Biological Chemistry". The first issue of the journal appeared in 1905. Motivated by the very same goal of trying to create an outlet for a wide dissemination of new scientific findings, he later founded the J"ournal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics" in 1908. Abel married Mary Hinman in 1883. They met while he was a principal and she was a school teacher in La Porte, Indiana. They had three children, one of whom was