ISSUE: The death of Dr. Robert Furchgott

OURVIEW: Remembering the Nobel Prize winner

Dr. Robert F. “Bob” Furchgott received world recognition when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1998. The man who spent his high school years in Orangeburg and who had a longtime family connection to our community has died.

Furchgott, who retired at age 88 in 2004 to live in Charleston, moved to Seattle in 2008 to an assisted living facility to be near of his daughters.

Orangeburg has reason to be proud of Furchgott’s accomplishments and the man’s sentiments about the community.

Furchgott and Gene Atkinson, who researches and writes about Orangeburg’s history, became friends over the years. Atkinson told Furchgott’s story in a T&D article:

Dr. Furchgott lived in Orangeburg from 1929 to 1934, but the family connection goes back to his grandparents, Jacob and Jenny Sorentrue, who ran a china and dry goods store on Russell Street. The Sorentrues are burried in Sunnyside Cemetery on Summers Street.

Atkinson wrote of Furchgott’s mother, Pena Sorentrue, growing up in Orangeburg before marrying Arthur Furchgott and moving to Charleston. Robert made many trips to Orangeburg during his childhood before the family moved here.

In Furchgott’s words to Atkinson: “I spent my high school years in Orangeburg enjoying small town life and competing with my cousin, Edwin Moseley, for the highest grades in our class. He won!”

“Within the first couple of years in high school, I knew that I would like to be a scientist. My parents were encouraging. They gave me chemistry sets and a small microscope as presents.:

He recounted memories of playing a role on the 1931 Orangeburg High School state championship football team, swimming in the Edisto River at the River Pavilion (now the Orangeburg Fine Arts Center) and bird watching.

“Orangeburg was really a good experience,” Furchgott said, referring to the fellowship and congeniality of his days here.

After graduating from Orangeburg High School in 1933, Furchgott went to the University of South Carolina as a freshman. He transferred to the University of North Carolina, where he graduated in 1937 with a degree in chemistry. In 1940, he received a doctorate in biochemistry from Northwestern University in Chicago. In 1956, after various stints in the academic world, he accepted the chairmanship of the pharmacology department at the medical college of the State University of New York in Brooklyn. He remained there for the rest of his academic career except for sabbaticals and research stints at several schools, including the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of Miami. Recognized as one of the world’s leading biomedical scientists, he has been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees from various universities.

Most of the research that led to the Nobel Prize was conducted in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. During a sabbatical at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1980, Furchgott wrote a paper about the Endothelial Derived Relaxing Factor (EDRF).

“Some other scientists used the term Endothelial Derived Relaxing Substance instead,” he remembers, but Furchgott’s acronym caught on. “I liked it better because my initials were the last two letters.”

Researchers all over the world were trying to identify this EDRF.

When a patient took the nitrate-type blood pressure medicines popular in the 1970s and 1980s, ERDF was released, and in turn caused relaxation of the smooth muscles around the blood vessels. As a result, the arteries would become larger, allowing better blood flow and a lower blood pressure. Finally, in 1986, Furchgott identified this EDRF as nitric oxide.

A large pharmaceutical company noticed in the research a side effect from taking the nitrate drugs. From that, they researched and developed one of the hottest-selling drugs ever to hit the world market – Viagra.

By the late 1980s, Furchgott stepped down as an active professor in the Department of Pharmacology to become professor emeritus.

This allowed him to devote all of his time to his true professional love — research. After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1998, he still continued with research until finally stepping down at age 88.

Atkinson reports that Furchgott’s ashes will be buried in Charleston. Among the mementos he leaves is a key to the city of Orangeburg presented him in 2008. In Furchgott’s lifetime of awards, the key stands as a reminder that Orangeburg celebrates his achievements just as he continued to celebrate having spent key years of his life here.

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