Geir Ivar Elgjo Følling: How my grandfather discovered PKU
So the grandson of the person who discovered PKU talked a little bit about his life, the man of course is Ivar Asbjorn Følling. For this reason PKU is also known as Følling's disease.
He had done many studies earlier in his life in chemistry but later he discovered PKU as a mother came up to him with her two children, both had healthy births but as they grow they steadily declined mentally and physically. They also had a strange oder on their bodies, that was giving their father bad asthma attacks, which is the reason why they came to Følling. Følling studied them and found they were very restless, they had very fair skin and very bad eczema. When he studied and tested their urine, it was found when he put iron chloride in the sample, the urine would turn bright green in colour, which turned out to be an excess in phenlypyruvic acid, which is what blocks the enzyme that breaks down Phenylalanine.
The grandson talked about how he remembered his grandfathers one time working with 20 litres of urine to study and test!
In 1962 he received the John P Kennedy Jr award for his work in discovering PKU.
The grandson said a very touching quote Følling said.
"I don't like the phrase Knowledge is not power, I would say Knowledge is humbleness."
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