Jens Christian SkouPHOTO: AARHUS UNIVERSITYJens Christian Skou, who earned a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1997 for his discovery of the sodium-potassium pump in cell membranes, died yesterday (May 28). He was 99 years old.
“His tireless struggle to tell politicians and the outside world about the importance of non-targeted funding for research has had a huge impact on the research environment,” Lars Bo Nielsen, dean of the Faculty of Health at Aarhus University, where Skou was professor emeritus, says in a statement. “He has been a cornerstone and a beacon for research, and there are a great many people who are deeply grateful for his efforts.”
Skou was born in Denmark in 1918. He earned his medical degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1944. Working as a surgeon, Skou became interested in the mechanism of action of anesthetics and joined Aarhus University in 1947 to conduct research as a graduate student. There, “I got so interested in doing ...
