Volume 1, Issue 4
Berkeley's Scientific Legacy
1959: Horace Albert Barker and the power of Vitamin B-12
If Horace Albert Barker were to tell you to take your vitamins, you knew he spoke with authority. One of the leading biochemists of the last century, the late UC Berkeley professor discovered the active form of vitamin B-12, an ingredient that's essential to the complex chemistry of life. Indeed, Barker's career-spanning studies in vitamin chemistry, amino acids, carbohydrates, and metabolism led directly to our current understanding of how chemical changes in our bodies make us sick or well.
A lifelong outdoorsman, Barker hiked and fished at his Mount Lassen cabin into his 90s.
Before his B-12 breakthrough, Barker was part of a team in 1944 that discovered how living cells synthesize sucrose. The success of that research was based in no small part on Barker's pioneering use of radioactive carbon-14 tracers to illuminate the biochemical reactions taking place in the cell.
In 1959, Barker was studying common soil bacterium found in the mud from nearby San Francisco Bay. He and his colleagues were examining the bacteria's anaerobic fermentation of amino acids. Once they found that the reaction was dependent on vitamin B-12, the researchers isolated and partially characterized the vitamin in its coenzyme form. Barker's continued studies of the coenzyme eventually helped physicians understand and treat diseases related to B-12 deficiencies, such as pernicious anemia.
Born in Oakland in 1907 and educated at Stanford University, Barker joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1936 to teach soil microbiology. During his tenure at the university, he chaired the Department of Plant Nutrition, the Department of Plant Biochemistry, and from 1962-1964, the newly-formed Department of Biochemistry in the College of Letters and Science. A building on campus was named in his honor in 1988. A professor emeritus of biochemistry and recipient of the prestigious National Medal of Science, Barker died in 2001 after a brief illness at the age of 93.