Maud Menten

Maud Menten

Maud Leonora Menten (March 20, 1879, Ontario – July 26, 1960, Ontario) was a Canadian physician-scientist who made significant contributions to enzyme kinetics and histochemistry. Her name is associated with the famous Michaelis-Menten equation in biochemistry.

Maud Menten was born in Port Lambton, Ontario and studied medicine at the University of Toronto (B.A. 1904, M.B. 1907, M.D. 1911). She was among the first women in Canada to earn a medical doctorate. She completed her thesis work at University of Chicago. At that time women were not allowed to do research in Canada, so she decided to do research in other countries such as the United States and Germany.

In 1912 she moved to Berlin where she worked with Leonor Michaelis, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1916. Menten worked as a pathologist at the University of Pittsburgh (1923–1950) and as a research fellow at the British Columbia Medical Research Institute (1951–1953).