John Marrack

John Richardson Marrack (born  November 26, 1886 in Clevedon , Somerset , †  June 13, 1976 in Houston ) was a British immunologist . He worked as a lecturer in chemical pathology at the University of Cambridge and at the London Hospital , and examined in particular the chemical-physical basis of the interactions between antibodies and antigens . He also found that antibodies have two binding sites for antigens.

Life

John Marrack was born in Clevedon in 1886 and, after attending Blundell's School in Tiverton , studied medicine at St John's College, University of Cambridge and London Hospital Medical College , which he graduated in 1908. He then devoted himself to research on rheumatoid arthritis at the Cambridge Research Hospital . During the First World War he did military service in the Royal Army Medical Corps , the medical branch of the medical service of the British Army , and received the Distinguished Service Order for his service . After the war he became a lecturer and professor of chemical pathology at the University of Cambridge and the London Hospital.

During the Spanish Civil War , he worked for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee from 1936 to 1939 , visiting the International Brigades and the Army of the Republican Government. As a result of this activity, Marrack came into the sights of the National Socialist police officers at the end of the 1930s, who classified him as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin placed him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who would be killed in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles should be located and arrested by the Wehrmacht from the occupation troops following special commandos of the SS with special priority.

During World War II he served as an advisor to the British Department of Food. After the war, he returned to research. He retired in 1952 and was the first editor-in-chief of the British Society of Immunology's newly published journal Immunology until 1961 . From 1963 to 1966 he was a visiting professor at the MD Anderson Hospital of the University of Texas .

John Marrack was a passionate sportsman and had at the London University long the title of university Master in seven years boxing in the welterweight held. He was married twice and fathered a son from his first marriage and three sons from his second marriage. He died in Houston in 1976 at the age of 89 . His niece is the immunologist Philippa Marrack , who deals with the molecular basis of antigen recognition by T lymphocytes .

Scientific work

Starting from the binding of calcium to proteins in blood serum , John Marrack devoted himself to researching the chemical-physical basis of the interactions between antibodies and antigens . In this regard, from the beginning of the 1930s, he examined in particular the interactions between the diphtheria toxin from Corynebacterium diphtheriae and the serum components that bind to the diphtheria toxin, which were referred to as "diphtheria antitoxin". For these serum components, the exact nature of which was unknown at the time, he assumed that they would be clearly definable proteins.

In the monograph "The Chemistry of Antigens and Antibodies" published by him in 1934 , he also suggested that the specific affinity of antibodies for antigens is based on the same factors as the formation of the structure of proteins , namely the shape of the molecules and the spatial distribution and strength of polar forces. This explanation of the antigen-antibody interactions later became known as the Lattice Hypothesis (grid hypothesis). Under the influence of this publication increasingly turned chemists and biochemists of immunological to research which previously mainly of microbiologists was marked and physicians. In addition, he was able to show that antibodies are bivalent, i.e. have two binding sites for antigens.

At the First International Congress of Immunology in 1971, John Marrack was one of five scientists to receive the Distinguished Service Award "for his revolutionary ideas that were still widely disseminated during his lifetime and for his pioneering work on the physicochemical interpretation of antigen-antibody interactions".

Works (selection)

• The Chemistry of Antigens and Antibodies. London 1934 (extended new edition 1938)
• Food and Planning. London 1943
• Clinical Pathology. Second edition, London 1927 (third to fifth editions London 1934, 1939, 1945; sixth edition under the title Panton and Marrack's Clinical Pathology , London 1951)

literature

• John Herbert Humphrey: Obituary: John Richardson Marrack. In: Nature . Volume 263rd edition of October 7, 1976, p. 535
• Obituary: John Richardson Marrack. In: The Lancet . Volume 308. Edition 7981 of August 14, 1976, p. 378
• Obituary. Professor J. R. Marrack. In: The Times . Edition of July 27, 1976, p. 14

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Marrack on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).