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Concept
Maurice M. Rapport
Summary
Maurice Rapport (1919 – 2011) was a biochemist who is best known for his work with the neurotransmitter serotonin. Rapport, Irvine H. Page, and Arda A. Green worked together to isolate and name the chemical. Alone, Rapport identified its structure and published his findings in 1948. Research since its discovery has implicated serotonin with mood regulation, appetite, sexual drive, and sleep as well as gastrointestinal roles. After his work with serotonin, Rapport did important research with cancer, cardiovascular disease, connective-tissue disease and demyelinating diseases.
Maurice Rapoport was born on September 23, 1919, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. His mother changed the spelling of the family name to Rapport. His father was a furrier from Russia who left the family when Rapport was a small child. Rapport graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, New York and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the City College of New York in 1940. He obtained his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1946 from California Institute of Technology.
In 1946, Maurice Rapport began working in the Cleveland Clinic Foundation which was directed by Irvine H. Page. Since the 1860s, we had known of a substance in the serum of blood vessels that promotes clotting. Rapport was assigned the project of isolating this serum. They enlisted the help of Arda A. Green, a physical biochemist. The substance was acquired by leaving a test tube of the reagents in a cold room while Rapport went on vacation. When he returned he isolated the crystals of the desired substance. In a paper published in 1948, they gave it a name: serotonin, derived from “serum” and “tonic”.
In 1948, Rapport left the Cleveland Clinic for a position at Columbia University and continued searching for serotonin's structure. In May 1949, the structure of serotonin was discovered to be 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT).
Serotonin was found to be the same substance that Dr. Vittorio Erspamer had been studying since the 1930s called “enteramine”.
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