Paul D. Boyer
Autobiography
The first 21 years of my life were spent
in Provo, Utah, then a city of about 15,000 people, beautifully
situated at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. Hardy Mormon
pioneers had settled the area only 70 years before my birth in
1918. Provo was a well-designed city with stable neighbourhoods,
a pride in its past and a spirit of unbounded opportunity. The
geographical isolation and lack of television made world
happenings and problems seem remote.
My father, Dell Delos Boyer, born in 1879 in Springville, Utah,
came from the Pennsylvania Boyers, who in turn came from an
earlier Bayer ancestry in what is now Holland and Germany. A
small portion of my Boyer DNA has been traced to John Alden,
famous as a Mayflower pilgrim who wooed for another and won for
himself. Dad's education, at what was then the Brigham Young
Academy, was delayed by the ill health he had endured in much of
his youth. Through his ambition, and the sacrifices of his
family, he acquired training in Los Angeles to become an
osteopathic physician. He served humanity well. More by example
than by word, my father taught me logical reasoning, compassion,
love of others, honesty, and discipline applied with
understanding. He also taught me such skills such as pitching
horseshoes and growing vegetables. Dad loved to travel. Family
trips to Yellowstone and to what are now national parks in
Southern Utah, driving the primitive roads and cars of that day,
were real adventures. Father became a widower when the youngest
of my five siblings was only eight. Fifteen years later he
married another fine woman. They shared many happy times, and she
cared for him during a long illness as he died from prostate
cancer at the age of 82. Prostate cancer also took the life of my
only brother when he was 76. If our society continues to support
basic research on how living organisms function, it is likely
that my great grandchildren will be spared the agony of losing
family members to most types of cancer.
Recently I scanned notes on a diary that my mother, Grace Guymon,
wrote in her late teens, when living near Mancos, Colorado. The
Guymons were among the Huguenots who fled religious persecution
in France. My French heritage has been mixed with English and
other nationalities as the Guymons descended. Mother's diary
revealed to me more about her vitality and charm than I
remembered from her later years, which were clouded by Addison's
disease. She died in 1933, at the age of 45, just weeks after my
fifteenth birthday. Discoveries about the adrenal hormones, that
could have saved her life, came too late. Her death contributed
to my later interest in studying biochemistry, an interest that
has not been fulfilled in the sense that my accomplishments
remain more at the basic than the applied level. Mother made a
glorious home environment for my early years. During her long
illness and after her death, all of the children helped with
family chores. One of my less pleasant memories is of getting up
in the middle of the night to use our allotted irrigation time to
water the garden.
The large, gracious home provided by Mother and Dad at 346 North
University Avenue has been replaced by a pizza parlor, although
an inspection a few months ago revealed that the irrigation ditch
for our garden area (now a parking lot) can still be found.
Mother had a talent for home decorating. I often read from a set
of the Book of Knowledge or Harvard Classics while lying
in front of the fireplace, with a mantel designed and decorated
by her. Staring into the glowing coals as a fire dims provided a
wonderful milieu for a youthful imagination. I also remember such
things as picnics in Provo Canyon, and the anticipation that I
might get to lick the dasher after cranking the ice-cream
freezer. My older brother, Roy, and I had a play-fight
relationship. I still carry a scar on my nose from when I plunged
(he pushed me!) through the mirror of the dining room closet. I
am told that I had a bad temper, and remember being banished to
the back hall until civility returned. Perhaps this temper was
later sublimated into drive and tenacity, traits that may have
come in part from my mother.
The great depression of the 1930s left lasting impressions on all
our family. Father's patients became non-paying or often
exchanged farm produce or some labor for medical care. Mother
saved pennies to pay the taxes. The burden of paper routes and
odd jobs to provide my spending money made it painful when my new
Iver Johnson bicycle was stolen. We were encouraged to be
creative. I recall mother's tolerance when she allowed me, at an
early age, to take off the hinges and doors of cupboards if I
would put them back on. My first exposure to chemistry came when
I was given a chemistry set for Christmas. It competed for space
in our basement with a model electric trains and an "Erector"
set. After school the neighborhood yards were filled with shouts
of play; games of "kick-the-can," "run-sheepy-run,"
"steal-the-sticks," as well as marbles, baseball and other
activities. In our back yard we built tree houses, dug
underground tunnels and secret passages, and made a small club
house. The mountains above our house offered other outlets for
adventuresome teenage boys. Days were spent in an abandoned cabin
or sleeping under the sky in the shadow of Provo peak. We even
took cultures of sour dough bread to the mountains and baked
delicious biscuits in an a rusty stove. Mountain hikes instilled
in me a life-long urge to get to the top of any inviting summit
or peak.
Provo public schools were excellent. At Parker Elementary School,
a few blocks from my home, I fell in love with my 3rd grade
teacher, Miss McKay. Students who learned more easily were
allowed to skip a grade, and I entered the new Farrer Junior High
school at a younger age than my classmates. This handicapped me
in two types of sporting events, athletics and courting girls.
Girls did not want to dance with little Paul Boyer; boys were
quite unimpressed with my physique. As I grew my status among
fellows improved. Once I got into a scuffle in gym class, the
instructor had the "combatants" put on boxing gloves, and I gave
more than I received. It wasn't until late high school and early
college that I gained enough size and skill to make me welcome on
intramural basketball teams.
I was one of about 500 students of Provo High School, where the
atmosphere was friendly, and scholarship and activities were
encouraged by both students and faculty. I participated on
debating teams and in student government, and served as senior
class president. I still have a particularly high regard for my
chemistry teacher, Rees Bench. I was pleased when he wrote in my
Yearbook for graduation, "You have proven yourself as a most
outstanding student." I graduated while still 16, and thought
myself quite mature. I wish I had saved a copy of my
valedictorian address. I suspect it may have sparkled with
naivete.
It was always assumed that I would go to college. The Brigham Young
University (BYU) campus was just a few blocks from my home
and tuition was minimal. It was a small college of about 3,500
students, less than a tenth of its present size. As in high
school, I enjoyed social and student government activities.
Friendships abounded. New vistas were opened in a variety of
fields of learning. Chemistry and mathematics seemed logical
studies to emphasize, although I had little concept as to where
they might lead. A painstaking course in qualitative and
quantitative analysis by John Wing gave me an appreciation of the
need for, and beauty of, accurate measurement. However, the
lingering odor of hydrogen sulfide, used for metal identification
and separation, called unwanted attention to me in later classes.
"Prof" Joe Nichol's enthusiasm for general chemistry was superbly
conveyed to his students. Professor Charles Maw excelled in
transferring a knowledge of organic chemistry to his students.
Biochemistry was not included in the curriculum.
Summers I worked as a waiter and managerial assistant at
Pinecrest Inn, in a canyon near Salt Lake City. One summer a
college friend and I lived there in a sheep camp trailer while
managing a string of saddle horses for the guests to use. A
different type of education came when as a member of a medical
corps in the National Guard I spent several weeks in a military
camp in California.
As my senior year progressed several career paths were
considered; employment as a chemist in the mining industry, a
training program in hotel management, the study of osteopathic or
conventional medicine, or some type of graduate training. Little
information was available about the latter possibility; but a few
chemistry majors from BYU had gone on to graduate school. I have
a tendency to be lucky and make the right choices based on
limited information. A notice was posted of a Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation (WARF) Scholarship for graduate studies. My
application was approved, and the stage was set for a later phase
of my career.
Before leaving Provo, a most important and fortunate event
occurred. A beautiful and talented brunette coed, with one year
of college to finish, indicated a willingness to marry me. She
came from a large and loving family, impoverished financially by
her father's death when she was 2 years old. She had worked and
charmed her way nearly through college. My savings were limited
and hers were negative. But it was clear that my choice was to
have her join with me in the Wisconsin adventure or take my
chances when I returned a year later. It was an easy decision.
Paul, who had just turned 21, and Lyda Whicker, 20, were married
in my father's home on August 31, 1939. Five days later we left
by train to Wisconsin for my graduate study.
A few months after our arrival our new marriage almost ended. I
was admitted to the student infirmary with diagnosed
appendicitis. Through medical mismanagement my appendix ruptured
and I became deathly ill. Sulfanilamides, discovered a few years
earlier by Domagk, saved my life.
Last summer I read an outstanding book, The Forgotten Plague:
How the Battle Against Tuberculosis Was Won and Lost, by
Frank Ryan. The book gives a stirring account, the first I have
read, of Domagk's research and how he was not allowed to leave
Hitler's Germany to receive the 1939 Nobel Prize.
Fortunately, the Biochemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison was outstanding and far ahead of most others in the
country. A new wing on the biochemistry building had recently
been opened. The excitement of vitamins, nutrition and metabolism
permeated the environment. Steenbock had recently patented the
irradiation of milk for enrichment with vitamin D. Elvehjem's
group had discovered that nicotinic acid would cure pellagra.
Petersen's group was identifying and separating bacterial growth
factors. Link's group was isolating and identifying a vitamin K
antagonist from sweet clover. Patents for the use of dicoumarol
as a rat poison and as an anticoagulant sweetened the coffers of
the WARF, the Foundation that supported my scholarship. Among
younger faculty an interest in enzymology and metabolism was
blossoming.
Married graduate students were rare, and the continuing economic
depression made jobs hard to find. But my remarkable wife soon
found a good job, and I settl