Otto
Knut Olof Folin (April
4, 1867 – October 25, 1934) was a Swedish-born American chemist who is best known for his
groundbreaking work at Harvard University on
practical micromethods for the determination of the constituents of
protein-free blood filtrates and the discovery of creatine phosphate in
muscles. Folin
was born in Åseda, Småland in Sweden. He was the seventh of twelve children of Nils Magnus
Folin and Eva Olson. He moved to America at the age of fifteen following two
brothers and an aunt who had already settled there. He carried on his schooling
in Stillwater, Minnesota. He
moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota entering
the University of Minnesota and
completed his B.S in 1892. In 1896, Folin returned to Sweden and began
his research in the laboratory of Prof. Olof Hammarsten (1841-1932) at Uppsala University. In
1897, he left to work in the laboratory of the chemist, Ernst Leopold Salkowski at
the Pathological Institute of Charité (Charité -
Universitätsmedizin Berlin) in Berlin, Germany. In 1890, he became a citizen of the United States. He joined the University of Chicago gaining
his Ph.D. in 1898. In 1899 he was appointed assistant
professor at West Virginia University.
He moved to the McLean Hospital Boston in
1900 as a research biochemist, eventually moving to Harvard Medical School in
1907 as an associate professor of biological chemistry, becoming the Hamilton
Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in 1909.
Together with Vintilă Ciocâlteu Otto
Folin designed the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent to
detect polyphenols. In 1920, he co-developed with Hsien Wu the Folin-Wu method of assaying glucose in protein-free
filtrates of blood. Folin was elected the president of the American
Society of Biological Chemists (now the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) in
1909. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Biological
Chemistry. He was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences and was awarded the Carl Wilhelm Scheele Medal
of the Swedish Chemical Society in
1930.