Anthony W Norman, PhD, Biochemist, Mentor, Distinguished Professor, and Principal Steward of Vitamin D Science (1938–2019)

Anthony W “Tony” Norman was born in Ames, Iowa, in January 1938. His father, Dr. AG Norman, was a highly respected soil scientist and plant biochemist who raised Tony in Ames and later in Ann Arbor, Michigan. AG Norman rose to the title of Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan, and was Founding Editor (1949) of the series Advances in Agronomy, serving for 20 years and advancing a struggling review journal to international prominence. Tony received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1959, where he was known as an adept tennis player. His PhD in Biochemistry was earned in Hector DeLuca’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963, thereby rendering Tony the “grand-student” of the famous Harry Steenbock, a pioneer in vitamin D research at Wisconsin who discovered that irradiation with ultraviolet light increased the vitamin D content of foods. Tony performed his postdoctoral research in the area of oxidative phosphorylation in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Paul D Boyer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in academic year 1963/1964, while simultaneously establishing his own laboratory in biochemistry at the University of California in nearby Riverside (UCR). It was in Los Angeles, when he was a member of the Boyer Group, that I first met Tony, facilitated by the fact that I was a senior majoring in chemistry at UCLA who had applied for admission to the UCR Graduate Program in Biochemistry. We talked electron transport and oxidative phosphorylation, and I was taken by what a nice, smart guy he was, and how welcoming he was in introducing me to his plans for vitamin D research at UCR. Short version, I stated that I would love to become the first graduate student in his laboratory at UCR, and have him as my mentor. Once enrolled at UCR in the Biochemistry Department, I began to witness and participate in the early days of themeteoric rise of Anthony Norman from a beginning Assistant Professor and fledgling vitamin D biochemist to one of the leading fat-soluble vitamin D researchers in the world. He was a master organizer, and mentored primarily via encouragement as he commanded research discussions by trying to bring out the best science in his trainees. The first research advance from his laboratory was a report in Science (1965) that the effect of vitamin D to stimulate intestinal calcium absorption in rachitic chickens was inhibited by actinomycin D, suggesting that unlike the water-soluble vitamins which functioned as enzyme cofactors, vitamin D action required mRNA/protein synthesis. Next, Dr. Norman’s group reported that after intracardially injecting radioactively labeled vitamin D into vitamin D–deficient chickens, the predominant subcellular fraction of the small intestine containing the radioactive tag was the nucleus (Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 1967)—consistent with a genomic mechanism of action for vitamin D or a metabolite. When I subfractionated intestinal nuclei later in 1967, this radioactivity was localized exclusively to purified chromatin, further supporting a role for DNA-driven gene transcription in the molecular response to vitamin D. We then demonstrated that when the chromatin-associated, labeled sterol was extracted from intestinal chromatin and analyzed chromatographically in numerous systems, it proved to be a metabolite of vitamin D more polar than 25(OH)D and, like 25(OH)D, biologically active. This series of experiments, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in August 1968, illuminated for the first time that vitamin D was metabolized to a hormone-like sterol, which comprises the functional form of vitamin D located at the actual target site in the proximity of DNA. This more polar D-metabolite was then found to be bound with high affinity and specificity to a protein that directed the novel Anthony W. Norman: Vitamin D Aficionado