W. Wallace Cleland

Cleland was born in 1930 in Baltimore, Maryland. He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1950 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1953 and 1955, respectively.[5] He was an avid stamp collector and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in Philately by the Smithsonian Institution in 2008.[2] Cleland died on March 6, 2013 after falling on ice.[6]

After carrying out postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago he returned to University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he became Assistant Professor in 1959. In 1962 he was promoted to Associate Professor and then Professor in 1966. He became J. Johnson Professor of Biochemistry in 1978, and Steenbock Professor of Chemical Science in 1982.[3]

Cleland was well known for being the first to utilize dithiothreitol for the reduction of disulfide bonds in proteins. The compound is therefore often called Cleland's reagent.[7] His research interests focus on the use of enzyme kinetics to deduce enzyme mechanisms, primarily those mechanisms involved in phosphoryl and acyl transfers.[5] He was a pioneer in the kinetic and mechanistic study of enzymes that utilize more than one substrate.[8]

• 1985 - Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
• 1986 - Fulbright Senior Scholar Award[5]
• 1990 - Merck Award (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)[5]
• 1993 - Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry (American Chemical Society)[5]
• 1995 - Repligen Corporation Award in Chemistry of Biological Processes(Biological Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society)[5]
• 1999 - Stein and Moore Award (Protein Society)[5]
• 2008 - Lifetime Achievement Award in Philately, Smithsonian Institution[2]