Albert Baird Hastings

Albert Baird Hastings (November 20, 1895 – September 24, 1987) was an American biochemist and physiologist. He spent 28 years as the department chair and Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard University. After retiring from Harvard, Hastings moved to the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation (now Scripps Research), where he became the director of the division of biochemistry and helped to establish the institution's emerging program in basic research. In 1966, he became one of the first faculty members at the University of California, San Diego's new medical school. His research focused on the biochemical underpinnings of physiology and included characterizing acid-base homeostasis in blood and pioneering the use of radioactive tracers for studying metabolism. Hastings received a number of honors and awards for his work, including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1937 and the President's Medal for Merit in 1948 following his wartime service on the Committee for Medical Research. Hastings died of heart failure in 1987 at age 91.

Early life and education Hastings was born in Dayton, Kentucky on November 20, 1985, and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. After his father died young of tuberculosis, Hastings intended to drop out of high school to find work, but a high school teacher arranged a biology assistantship for him that enabled him to finish his studies. After graduation, Hastings began his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, originally intending to study chemical engineering but switching to chemistry after being recruited as a laboratory assistant by physical chemist Floyd Bartell.

At age 63, Hastings arranged an early retirement from his Harvard position in order to return to research from his administration-heavy duties and moved to the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation (now Scripps Research Institute) in La Jolla, California. His role there was to expand the institution's basic research program, which at the time was limited in scope; when he arrived he received a large grant from the National Institutes of Health which helped to initiate this effort. At Scripps he continued tracer studies to explore the role of carbon dioxide in metabolism. Wanting to continue to focus on research rather than administration, he recruited Frank Huennekens to Scripps to build and develop the biochemistry department there, much as Hastings had previously done at Harvard.

Albert Baird Hastings died in La Jolla at age 91 of heart failure.