‘Cohn and Edsall’: Physical chemistry conclusively supports a protein model Original Research Article

The Harvard laboratory of Edwin J. Cohn and J.T. Edsall and the treatise on proteins that emerged from their work exerted a dominant effect from the 1920s to the 1950s. Its most important achievement was to solidify a molecular picture of proteins, especially the picture of a globular protein. This model representation did not originate with Cohn and Edsall, nor were they directly crusading for it. Their support for the model evolved simply from the sheer volume and diversity of their work. Everything they did or wrote about depended on a molecular picture. All of it was in the realm of physical chemistry and inexorably linked by rigorous theoretical equations to parameters of size, shape and ionic charge.