High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Joseph Stewart Fruton (May 14, 1912 – July 29, 2007), born Joseph Fruchtgarten, was a Jewish Polish-American biochemist and historian of science. His most significant scientific work involved synthetic peptides and their interactions with proteases; with his wife Sophia Simmonds he also published an influential textbook, General Biochemistry (1953; 1958). From 1970 until his death, Fruton worked extensively on the history of science, particularly the history of biochemistry and molecular biology.