Horace Albert "Nook" Barker (November 29, 1907 – December 24, 2000) was an Americanbiochemist andmicrobiologist who studied the operation of biological and chemical processes in plants, humans and other animals, including usingradioactive tracers to determine the roleenzymes play in synthesizingsucrose. He was recognized with theNational Medal of Science for his role in identifying an active form ofVitamin B₁₂.

Barker was born on November 29, 1907, inOakland, California. He moved with his family toPalo Alto, California when he was 11 years old. He spent a year in Germany following high school, learning theGerman language and absorbing its culture. He attendedStanford University, graduating in 1929 with a bachelor's degree inphysical science, and was awarded aPh.D. in chemistry in 1933.^[1]

After graduating from Stanford, he performed a two-year postgraduate fellowship at theHopkins Marine Station under the supervision ofmicrobiologistC. B. van Niel, who fostered Barker's interest in botany and taught him techniques for isolating microorganisms. He then spent a year at the Delft Microbiology Laboratory in theNetherlands underAlbert Kluyver.^[1]

Barker was hired in 1936 by theUniversity of California, Berkeley to teach soil microbiology. He was part of a team that developed the use ofCarbon-14 as a radioactive tracer, using the technique in 1944 to show how sucrose is synthesized in living cells by enzymes.^[2]

Research led by Barker during the 1950s provided insights into the uses of vitamin B₁₂ in the body using bacterium he had isolated from mud taken fromSan Francisco Bay. By 1959, through documenting the metabolic flow of the vitamin B₁₂ coenzyme, Barker was able to show its role in the body, helping to explain various diseases, such aspernicious anemia, one of a series of conditions resulting from [[vitamin B₁₂ deficiency]].^[2] In aWhite House ceremony held on January 17, 1969,U.S. PresidentLyndon Johnson awarded Barker with theNational Medal of Science "[f]or his profound study of the chemical activities of microorganisms, including the unraveling of fatty acid metabolism and the discovery of the active coenzyme form of vitamin B₁₂."^[3]

When the department of biochemistry was established in 1959, he was named as a professor there. He served as the department's chairman in the 1960s, and continued work there for more than a decade after retiring in 1975 when he became anemeritus professor. In 1953, he was elected a member of theUnited States National Academy of Sciences.^[4] He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967.^[5]

A resident ofBerkeley, California, Barker died at age 93 on December 24, 2000, due toheart failure at his home there. He had been married for 62 years to his wife, the former Margaret McDowell, at the time of her death in 1995.^[2]

• Methanosarcina barkeri Schnellen 1947

• Horace Albert Barker Papers, 1933-1992,The Bancroft Library

• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir

• 1907 births
• 2000 deaths
• 20th-century American biochemists
• American microbiologists
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• National Medal of Science laureates
• Scientists from Berkeley, California
• Scientists from Oakland, California
• Stanford University alumni
• University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty

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