November 14, 1911-April 4, 1975 BY H. A. BARKER MICHAEL
DOUDOROFF WAS A general microbiologist who made major
contributions to knowledge of carbohydrate metabolism in
bacteria. His early studies of sucrose utilization by
Pseudomonas saccharophila, a bacterium he isolated and made
famous, established the importance of glucosyl transfer
reactions in metabolism and provided the first substantial
evidence that an enzyme may function as a glucosyl carrier. His
investigations of glucose oxidation by extracts of P.
saccharophila resulted in the discovery of a major pathway of
glucose degradation in bacteria, the Entner-Doudoroff pathway.
Other sugars were shown to be metabolized by similar, but
divergent, pathways. His studies of assimilatory processes in
aerobic and photosynthetic bacteria demonstrated that poly-ß-
hydroxybutyric acid is a major storage product formed from
substrates metabolized via acetate or butyrate and is utilized
by means of both intracellular and extracellular enzymes. In the
latter part of hi