John E. Hodge

John Edward Hodge (October 12, 1914 – January 3, 1996) was an American chemist, born in Kansas City, Kansas, best known for establishing the mechanisms in the Maillard reaction pathway.

Early life Hodge was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1914 to mother Annabelle Hodge and father John Alfred Hodge. He had one younger sister, Dorothy.

His father graduated with a master's in science from Indiana University in 1910, and moved to Kansas City where he worked as a science teacher and principal at the African-American Sumner High School, which the young John Hodge attended. Sumner High School was built in 1905 in response to Kansas City, Kansas being exempted from Kansas state law prohibiting racially segregated schools, and was to be "as well equipped as the existing Kansas City, KS High School." Despite the school board's emphasis on manual training courses, the high school focused on college preparation and academic excellence. During his time at the University of Kansas, Hodge was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa scholastic society and the Pi Mu Epsilon honorary mathematics organization. was named a "Citation Classic" by the Science Citation Index in 1979. In it he studied the chemistry of non-enzymatic browning reactions in dehydrated foods, such as the Maillard reaction. The article included a reaction scheme which is known as the "Hodge Scheme": this reaction pathway that he described still holds good today and remains widely cited. It has been suggested it be renamed to the Maillard-Hodge Reaction to reflect his greater contribution than Maillard. His seminal paper on the mechanisms of the Maillard Reaction, "Dehydrated Foods, Chemistry of Browning Reactions in Model Systems" has been cited over 1300 times .

Personal life

Hodge married Beulah Payne, a chemistry student in St. Louis, in 1939. They had one son before Beulah died in 1942. Hodge later married Justine Mitchell in 1948. in Peoria, Illinois.

Awards

American Chemical Society Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry - chairman Superior Service Award from U.S. Department of Agriculture (1953) Chairman of the Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (1964) National Academy of Scientists - National Research Council (1977) Honored at NIH Conference on the Maillard Reaction in Aging, Diabetes, and Nutrition (1988)