| Samuel Krimm | |
| Birth Date: | October 19, 1925[1] |
| Birth Place: | Morristown, New Jersey |
| Field: | Biophysics |
| Work Institutions: | University of Michigan |
| Doctoral Students: | Willie Hobbs Moore |
Samuel Krimm (born October 19, 1925) is an American physicist with a research focus in biophysics (spectroscopy, macromolecules, protein folding). He is professor emeritus and research scientist emeritus at University of Michigan.[2] [3]
Krimm earned a BS in chemistry, from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1947), and MS and PhD in physical chemistry from Princeton University (1949, 1950).[4]
Krimm was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 1959.[5]
In 1977, Krimm received the American Physical Society's Polymer Physics Prize "For his outstanding experimental studies and theoretical developments in infrared and Ra-man spectroscopy and X-ray scattering from natural and synthetic polymers".
In 1983, he was awarded the Humboldt Prize.[6]
From 1967-1972 he was doctoral advisor for Willie Hobbs Moore, who earned the first PhD in physics for an African-American woman at an American university.[7]
He was the first Director of the University of Michigan Program in Protein Structure and Design, created in 1985.[8]
He has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles, on the infrared and Raman spectroscopy of synthetic polymers and proteins, and in the field of theoretical and computational studies of the structures of such macromolecules.[9]
In his most recent work, he and colleague/collaborator Noemi Mirkin have proposed a new paradigm in the field of protein folding they term "milieu folding" demonstrating that the presence of particular molecules in the surrounding aqueous environment of a protein molecule ("milieu") can alter the propensities for the folded structure of the protein. They suggest that this is a more appropriate framework than "misfolding" to explore and understand protein-folding diseases.[10] [11]