Maude Lenora Menten is best known for her work in enzyme kinetics that describes the relationship between substrate and enzyme in biological systems and gave rise to the Michaelis-Menten equation. The designation of this famous function has forever immortalized both Maude Menten and Leonor Michaelis. Menten also co-devised what is now the standard method of isolating and describing protein behavior.

Born in Port Lambton, Ontario, Canada in 1879, Menten received early training at the University of Toronto, where she earned B.A. and M.B. degrees in 1904 and 1907, respectively. Her master's research involved the study of the distribution of chloride in nerve cells and fibers. The following year she studied the effect of radium on tumors at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. She eventually received an M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1911.

Menten spent one year (1912) at the University of Berlin working with Leonor Michaelis, during which time they derived the Michaelis-Menten equation. She then went to the University of Chicago, where she obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1916. Having secured a position as an assistant professor in the medical school of the University of Pittsburgh in 1923, Menten was finally promoted to full professor in 1949, when she was 79 years old. Throughout her career at Pittsburgh, she maintained a strong, active research program resulting in more than 70 publications. Her publication in 1944 of a new technique for the demonstration of the enzyme alkaline phosphates ushered in the azo-dye method. Soon after her retirement in 1950, Menten took a position at the Medical Institute of British Columbia for a short time.

Menten was a woman of many interests and talents, including languages, music, and fine arts. Menten was an accomplished painter, and her paintings were exhibited with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.

Menten died in Leamington, Ontario on July 20, 1960.

1. University of Virginia Chemical Engineering: Maude Menten
2. Canadian Medical Hall of Fame: Dr. Maud Menten

1. Miller, J. A. Women in Chemistry. In Women of Science: Righting the Record; Kass-Simon, G., Farnes, P., Eds.; Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1993; pp 323-325.
2. Rayner-Canham, M.; Rayner-Canham, G. Maude Lenora Menten (1879-1960). In Women in Chemistry: Their Changing Roles from Alchemical Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century; American Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundation: Washington, DC, 1998; pp 157-159.