with John Jacob Abel at Johns Hopkins University Medical School (1927–1928), he traveled to Europe as National Research Council Fellow in 1928–1929, where he worked with Max Bergmann and Leonidas Zervas at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research in Dresden, and with George Barger at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. He then returned to the University of Illinois as a professor. In 1932 he started working at the George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C. and in 1938 at the Cornell Medical College in New York City, where he stayed until his emeritation in 1967. Following retirement, he held a position at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1974 du Vigneaud suffered from a stroke which prevented him from resuming his academic career. He died in 1978, one year after his wife's death in 1977. Scientific contributions Vigneaud's career was characterized by an interest in sulfur-containing peptides, proteins, and especially peptide hormones. Even before his Nobel-Prize-winning work on elucidating and synthesizing oxytocin and vasopressin via manipulating the AVP gene, he had established a reputation from his research on insulin, biotin, transmethylation, and penicillin. He also carried out a series of structure-activity relationships for oxytocin and vasopressin, perhaps the first of their type for peptides. That work culminated in the publication of a book entitled A Trail of Research in Sulphur Chemistry and Metabolism and Related Field. Honours Vigneaud joined Alpha Chi Sigma while at the University of Illinois in 1930. He received the 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone," a reference to his work on the peptide hormone oxytocin. See also University of Rochester List of Nobel Laureates affiliated with the University of Rochester References External links including the Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1955 A Trail of Sulfa Research: From Insulin to Oxytocin http://weill.cornell.edu/archives/pdf/personal_aids/DuVigneaud.pdf 1901 births 1978 deaths American biochemists American Nobel laureates Cornell University faculty Nobel laureates in Chemistry Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Academics of the University of Edinburgh George Washington University faculty Scientists from Chicago Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Carl Schurz High School alumni