In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 20 March 1879
- Died
- 1960
- Birthplace
- Port Lambton, Ontario
- Country
- Canada
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Enzyme kinetics and laboratory investigation
- Joint publication
- Invertase paper, 1913
Why this life matters
Her joint work with Michaelis connected a measurable reaction rate to an explicit chemical model, leaving a lasting problem of interpretation as well as an equation.
Timeline
Key moments
Medical degree
Graduates at Toronto.
Joint publication
Paper with Leonor Michaelis.
Leaves the Pittsburgh faculty
Retires after a long pathology career.
Medical training and research opportunities
The University of Toronto’s historical degree listing records Menten’s M.B. in 1907 and M.D. in 1911.
She had also worked at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame places these moves within the restricted research opportunities available to women in Canada. She subsequently worked in Berlin with Leonor Michaelis and completed a Chicago PhD in 1916.
A joint investigation of a reaction
Michaelis and Menten’s 1913 paper studied invertase acting on sucrose. A modern translation and reanalysis describes careful measurements of optical rotation and attention to initial rates and product inhibition. Their paper involved more than the simplified equation now used in introductory exercises.
Sources for this section: [3]
Pathology and a sustained laboratory career
Pitt Med’s historical account dates her appointment as a pathology instructor to 1918. She became a full professor in 1948 and retired in 1950. Her interests extended beyond enzyme kinetics to histochemistry, blood and other laboratory problems.
She also held a clinical-pathology post at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh.
She also investigated electrophoresis, the movement of proteins in an electric field. Pitt’s account connects this work with differences in the size and mobility of hemoglobin molecules.
Another research setting after retirement
After Pittsburgh, she returned to Canada and pursued research at the British Columbia Medical Research Institute.
She died in 1960 and was later inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 1998.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Maud Menten
- Is a Michaelis constant always a direct binding measurement?
- A fitted parameter belongs to the model used. A half-rate concentration in a supplied equation does not, by itself, establish a microscopic binding mechanism.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Yellapragada Subbarow
Compare collaborative biochemical investigation and institutional laboratory work.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. Canadian Medical Hall of FameMaud L. Menten: biography
The equation caption is not adopted. Only the death year is retained; the exact day was not independently crosschecked.
- 2. Pitt Med, October 2000The unstoppable Maud Menten
Read the indexed original article passage. Direct retrieval returned HTML and was rejected as a PDF; no full original-PDF reading is claimed.
- 3. BiochemistryThe Original Michaelis Constant
Read the modern introduction and selected translation commentary/equations, not the whole German original or complete supplement.
- 4. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 2022–2023 factbookSelected achievements: Menten
- 5. University of Toronto, 100 Years of BiochemistryMenten degree listing: selected excerpt
Read only the retained indexed listing: M.B. (1907) and M.D. (1911), rather than the Hall of Fame’s master’s wording. No complete book was read; its other PhD and death statements are not adopted.