Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., the fifth of six children in his family, was born on November 19, 1915, in Burlingame, Kansas. His father, Earl Wilbur Sutherland, a Wisconsin native, had attended Grinnell College for two years and farmed in New Mexico and Oklahoma before settling in Burlingame to run a dry-goods business, where Earl Wilbur, Jr., and his siblings worked. Sutherland's mother, Edith M. Hartshorn, came from Missouri. She had been educated at a "ladies college," and had received some nursing training. In 1933 Sutherland entered Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas. Supporting his studies by working as an orderly in a hospital, Sutherland graduated with a B.S. in 1937. Sutherland then entered Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri. There he enrolled in a pharmacology class taught by Carl Ferdinand Cori. Impressed by Sutherland's abilities, Cori offered him a job as a student assistant. This was Sutherland's first experience with...