Wandering in the gardens of the mind: Peter Mitchell and the making of Glynn PDF
Preview Wandering in the gardens of the mind: Peter Mitchell and the making of Glynn
(cid:1) Wandering in the gardens of the m ind John Prebble Bruce Weber Foreword by Sir Tom Blundell W andering in the 1 2003 p e t e r m i t c h e l l a n d t h e m a k i n g o f g l y n n Gardens of the Mind 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2003by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prebble, John, 1944– Wandering in the gardens of the mind : Peter Mitchell and the making of Glynn / John Prebble, Bruce Weber. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-514266-7 1. Mitchell Peter Dennis. 2. Glynn Research Institute. 3. Biochemists— England—Biography. I. Weber, Bruce, 1941— II. Title. QP511.8.M58P73 2002 572′.092—dc21 2002075411 [B] 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper (cid:1) To Pat and Kathy P r e f a c e (cid:1) In many ways, biological science came of age in the twentieth century. Among the large number of scientists who brought about the new un- derstanding of living things was Peter Mitchell (1920–1992). Mitchell is important in twentieth-century biology because he was the major figure responsible for bringing about a paradigm change in biochemical think- ing about metabolic energy and discovering the link between metabolic energy and the transfer of substances across membranes. He himself undertook something of a crusade in the 1950s in trying to bring to- gether thinking about physiological transport across membranes and thinking about the general metabolism of cells largely conceived as tak- ing place in undifferentiated solution. While Mitchell regarded his ideas on the relation between transport and metabolism as his major contri- bution, the world remembers him for a derivative of these ideas—the chemiosmotic theory developed in the 1960s and 1970s. This theory explained a phenomenon, which had baffled biochemists since Engel- hardt, Kalckar, Ochoa, and others first described the process of oxida- tive phosphorylation, whereby metabolic energy of oxidation is con- served as ATP(adenosine triphosphate), the energy currency of the cell. There are other reasons for writing a biography of Mitchell. Apart from developing the chemiosmotic theory, which solved a long-stand- ing problem, he engaged in other creative activities. Endowed with family money, he set out to prove that it was still possible to set up and run a small independent research institute, the Glynn Research Insti- tute. This he did with his lifelong associate, Jennifer Moyle. The award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Mitchell in 1978 not only provided recognition of his contribution to biochemistry but also, at least in his eyes, justified the existence of the institute. To date, there have been two biographies of Mitchell: a short authoritative Royal Society biographical memoir by Bill Slater and a short unpublished manuscript by Milton Saier. Essentially, Mitchell is that rare breed of scientist, a theoretical biolo- gist. He believed in thinking about science almost as an activity in its own right, and, unlike his older contemporary Hans Krebs, Mitchell proposed complex theories before proceeding to test them. The words of our title ap- pear on a plaque in the garden of remembrance created by Helen Mitchell and reflect the spirit with which Peter Mitchell approached biology. All of these aspects of Mitchell’s life, and many others, are why we feel a life of Peter Mitchell is needed. The history of the remarkable achievements of twentieth-century biochemistry is only beginning to be written, with but a few biographies so far published. It is our intention that this biography of Peter Mitchell will tell one important story of this stream of human endeavor. One of us (J. P.) first heard Peter Mitchell lecture in 1956 and was fascinated by his approach to biological thinking. Although he heard him lecture many times over the years, he did not get to know Mitchell until late in his life. The other (B. W.) first interviewed Mitchell in 1979 and carried out many more interviews over the ensuing years. Both of us have interviewed, and corresponded with, many biologists and members of the family over recent years. We owe a great debt to those who had the patience and were prepared to give time to answering our questions and telling us about Mitchell. We are especially indebted to Mrs. Helen Mitchell for her interest, encouragement, and help and to Dr. Jennifer Moyle for her help. We would also like to record our appre- ciation of the advice offered by Professor Mårten Wikström (University of Helsinki) on chapters 9and 11and to Dr. Harmke Kamminga (Uni- versity of Cambridge) on chapters 3and 4. The biography is based primarily on interviews with Mitchell himself, discussions with scientists who knew him, and his published papers, but particularly on the extensive files of letters and other papers he left when he died. While this work has been proceeding, Mitchell’s papers have now been catalogued and are housed in the library of the University of Cam- bridge. The letters are mostly from the Glynn period (1964–1992), although there are some from earlier years. Thus the major resource for the early pe- riod has been interviews, while the later years have relied heavily on archives, principally Mitchell’s archives, but we have also drawn to a viii preface limited extent from Professor E. C. Slater’s archives at Haarlem in the Netherlands. Wherever possible, significant points have been confirmed from more than one source, and we have consulted published records such as the Cambridge UniversityReporterfor the Cambridge period (1939–1955). Mitchell was a very complex person, and we have discovered people’s memories of events in which he was involved, and their feel- ings about him, vary widely. We offer this biography as our best inter- pretation of his life on the basis of the material available to us, but we are aware that some of his contemporaries will have different views. Mitchell left relatively few laboratory notes, and the ones we found are almost exclusively from the Edinburgh period (1956–1963). He did not keep good records of his experiments, and those that have survived are sketchy; they can be interpreted only with difficulty and some un- certainty. They were originally housed in binders, but by the time we saw them in the last days of the Glynn Research Institute, they were al- most all loose and mostly undated. During the Glynn period, the labo- ratory notes were probably kept exclusively by Jennifer Moyle, who, re- grettably, has forbidden access during her lifetime. There are special problems about writing a scientific biography of a twentieth-century scientist, which relate to the nature of the science. While the central reason for writing about Mitchell is the achievement of his science, the essential character of that science itself is not easily conveyed to the reader because of its extremely technical nature. We have endeavored to simplify the biochemistry but realize that, to bio- chemists, we will be seen to have glossed over, and on occasions mis- represented, important details of Mitchell’s and also other scientists’ work. We also appreciate that our attempts to eliminate the technical detail may not have gone far enough for some readers, and, to give some assistance to them, we have added an appendix on the theories of oxidative phosphorylation. We would like to acknowledge the help of Dr. Peter Rich, who suc- ceeded Peter Mitchell as director of the Glynn Research Institute and who gave us access to Mitchell’s papers before they were transferred to Cambridge. The many others who have given us their time, advice, and support are listed in the acknowledgments. Their generosity and friendship are greatly appreciated. We are indebted to our editor, Kirk Jensen, and his colleagues at Oxford University Press for their help. Finally we are most grateful to Professor Sir Tom Blundell for preface ix
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