Minor J. Coon

Minor J. Coon
Born	1921 Englewood, Colorado
Fields	Biochemistry
Institutions	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Alma mater	University of Colorado, University of Illinois
Doctoral advisor	William C. Rose
Known for	Study of

Minor Jesser (Jud) Coon (1921-) is an American biochemist and Victor V Vaughan Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is best known for his research on and as the co-discoverer of HMG-CoA, along with Bimal Kumar Bachhawat.

Coon was born in Englewood, Colorado in 1921. He was an undergraduate student at the University of Colorado and received his bachelor's degree in 1943. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1946, supervised by William Cumming Rose. During his graduate work he studied amino acid metabolism and nitrogen balance using himself and his fellow students as volunteer subjects.

After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois, Coon became a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. He moved to the University of Michigan Medical School in 1955 and remained there for the remainder of his career, chairing the biological chemistry department from 1970 to 1990 and becoming the Victor V. Vaughan Distinguished University Professor of Biological Chemistry in 1983. Coon served as the president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from 1991 to 1992. He became a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1983 and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. A professorship in his honor was established at the University of Michigan in 1991.