Grace Medes

Grace Medes (November 9, 1886 – December 31, 1967) was an American biochemist, who discovered tyrosinosis—a metabolic disorder today known as tyrosinemia—and studied fatty acid metabolism. She was awarded the Garvan-Olin Medal in 1955 for her work.

Grace May Medes was born in Keokuk, Iowa, daughter of William Johnson Medes and Kate Francisco Hagny Medes. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Kansas, both in zoology, and a PhD at Bryn Mawr College in 1916.

After earning her PhD, Medes taught at Vassar College (she was the first female faculty member with a PhD in the Physiology department there) and Wellesley College, before moving to the University of Minnesota Medical School as an assistant professor. In her time at Minnesota, she discovered the human metabolic disorder she named "tyrosinosis" in 1932; although her patient was atypical and the mechanism she identified has since been questioned, her testing methods remain a useful model for researchers studying the disorder, now known as tyrosinemia.

In 1932, she became head of the department of metabolic chemistry at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she specialized in the metabolism of sulfur and fatty acids. Her work established a basis for the later discovery of Coenzyme A.

In 1955, Medes won the Garvan Medal (now the Garvan-Olin Medal) from the American Chemical Society as an outstanding woman in chemistry. Also in 1955, Medes was one of the year's five distinguished alumni by the University of Kansas. Medes retired from the research institute in 1956, but picked up her work on tyrosinosis again in retirement, working at Fels Research Institute at Temple University. She co-authored a book, Normal Growth and Cancer (1963) with colleague Stanley P. Reimann.

A symposium on tyrosinosis was held in Oslo, Norway in her honor in 1965.

Medes died on New Year's Eve in 1967. She was 81 years old.