Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr. was an American pharmacologist and biochemist. Sutherland was born on November 19, 1915, in Burlingame, Kansas. Sutherland graduated from Washburn College in 1937 and received his M.D. degree from Washington University Medical School in 1942. He received the National Medal Of Science in 1973. In 1973, after spending 10 years at Vanderbilt University, Sutherland moved to Miami, Florida where he joined the faculty at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine as a distinguished professor of biochemistry. On March 9, 1974, Sutherland died of internal bleeding due to surgical complications after suffering a massive esophageal hemorrhage.