David Rittenberg

In 1942 Bloch and David Rittenberg discovered that the two-carbon compound acetic acid was the major building block in the 30 or more steps in the biosynthesis (natural formation) of cholesterol, a waxlike alcohol found in animal cells. In his search to determine how acetic acid molecules combine in…

chemists, Rudolf Schoenheimer and David Rittenberg. That technique provided one of the single most important tools for investigating the complex chemical changes that occur in life processes. At about the same time, other workers localized the sites of metabolic reactions by ingenious technical advances in the studies of organs,…