Earl Wilbur Sutherland, biochemist and first sitting Vanderbilt University faculty member to be awarded a Nobel Prize, was born in Burlingame, Kansas on November 19, 1915. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1937 from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and earned his M.D.in 1942 from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. After serving during World War II in the medical corps, he returned to Washington University as a researcher in the pharmacology laboratory of Nobel laureate Carl Ferdinand Cori. In 1953, Dr. Sutherland became director of the Department of Pharmacology at Case Western Reserve University, where he discovered the role of cyclic AMP in mediating the action of certain hormones. In 1963, Sutherland moved to Vanderbilt University, where he was served on the faculty as professor of physiology until his departure in 1973 to the University of Miami Medical School. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1971, Sutherland won the Albert Lasker Award for basic medical research in 1970, as well as the National Medal of Science in 1973. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1966. Earl Sutherland died on March 9, 1974 in Miami.