Adrian John Brown

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Adrian John Brown (born April 27, 1852 in Burton-upon-Trent , † July 2, 1919 in Turramurra near Sydney) was a British biochemist .

Life

Brown's father, a bank manager and bug explorer, awakened an enthusiasm for natural history , especially geology , in Adrian John and his older stepbrother Horace at an early age .

Adrian John Brown was initially mainly interested in mineralogy . He took courses in geology, mining and mineralogy between 1869 and 1870 and studied chemistry at the Royal School of Mines . Although he actually wanted to work as a mining engineer , after graduating he took the opportunity to work briefly as a private assistant to the lecturer in chemistry, Dr. Russell to go to Bartholomew's Hospital . In 1873 he returned to his hometown to work as a chemist in a brewery . Together with other chemists who were also employed at breweries in Burton-upon-Trent, he formed a non-university research group. Johann Peter Grieß , Cornelius O'Sullivan and his brother Horace, who was also a chemist, supported each other in their research in this community.

In 1886 Brown published his first major article on the biochemical processes in acetic acid bacteria , followed by work on reproduction and fermentation in yeast . After working in industry for over 25 years, he took over the newly created chair of brewing at Mason Science College in Birmingham in 1899 . After founding the University of Birmingham , which emerged from Mason Science College in 1900, he became the first professor of fermentation biology and chemistry in 1904 and director of the UK's first brewing institute. He worked there until his death. At the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland , he took first tests in biological chemistry, and so paved the biochemistry study the way. In 1911 he was elected as a member (" Fellow ") to the Royal Society and between 1917 and 1919 he was President of the Institute of Brewing .

Like his father and brother, he was an avid naturalist. In his spare time he was interested in ornithology , botany , sport and fishing. Brown was married; he only outlived his wife by three days. After his death, the Journal of the Institute of Brewing devoted an entire issue to him dealing with his life's work.

Act

Investigations on acetic acid bacteria

Using acetic acid bacteria that he obtained from mother vinegar , Brown researched the conversion of alcohol to acetic acid by a living organism. He observed that both ethanol and propanol were oxidized to the respective acids acetic acid and propanoic acid, but methanol , 2-propanol and 2-methyl-1-propanol were not metabolized by the bacteria. In the course of these investigations he was the first scientist to isolate and describe Acteobacter xylium , a bacterium that can produce cellulose and release it into the surrounding medium in 1886 . Cellulose is otherwise mainly found in the cell walls of plants.

Studies on yeast

Brown worked intensively on the reproduction and fermentation of yeast and was one of the pioneers in the field of enzyme kinetics . In 1892 he found that yeast always fermented sucrose at the same rate; regardless of how much sucrose is in the medium. From this he later deduced that sucrose forms a complex with the enzyme invertase , which is responsible for breaking down the sugar. This thesis was supported by various observations by other scientists. As early as 1880, the French chemist Charles Adolphe Wurtz had described an insoluble complex of papain and fibrin that formed before hydrolysis . It was also known that invertase can be inactivated by heating. However, if sucrose was added before heating, the activity of the invertase was retained even if the temperature was raised to a temperature that would otherwise destroy the enzyme. In addition, Emil Fischer postulated the lock-and-key principle in 1894 , in which the spatial configuration of the enzyme must match that of the substrate in order to enable a reaction. Brown used this basis to interpret his experiments and was the first scientist to deduce the existence of an enzyme-substrate complex from the kinetics of a reaction. Leonor Michaelis and Maud Menten later recognized that the concentration independence discovered by Brown only applies to higher substrate concentrations. From this knowledge they developed the Michaelis-Menten theory, which is named after them today .

Studies on barley

Brown discovered in 1907, while conducting research on the malting process, that the seed coat of the stye was a semipermeable membrane . He had noticed that a variant of barley that produced blue-colored barley grains did not change color when he allowed the undamaged grains to swell in dilute sulfuric acid . If the grains were damaged, the dye reacted with the sulfuric acid and turned the grains red. He was also able to concentrate sulfuric acid by adding barley grains. He concluded that water can diffuse into the grain , but that dissolved salts or sugar cannot pass through the seed coat. Since the outer husk ( fruit peel or pericarp) was dissolved by the acid, he assumed that only the underlying seed coat ( testa) formed this diffusion barrier. It has not yet been clarified whether the pericarp in barley is also semipermeable. Brown used the stye for a number of other studies on diffusion. The results of this work were not only of scientific value, but could also be used by the maltsters in the breweries.

Further research areas

Brown also dealt with the inheritance of color in barley grains and with Bacillus subtilis .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors: Author names starting with Bro - Brr
  2. ↑ a b c d A. Harden: Obituary Notice: Adrian John Brown . In: Biochem J . tape 14 , no. 1 , February 1920, p. 1-3 , PMID 16742879 , PMC 1258887 (free full text).
  3. ↑ a b c unknown: staff. In: Journal of the Institute of Brewing. 27, 1921, pp. 202-206, doi: 10.1002 / j.2050-0416.1921.tb02482.x .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f E. Knecht, TE Thorpe et al .: Obituary notices: James Robert Appleyard, 1870–1921; Adrian Brown, 1852-1919; William Gowland, 1842-1922; Prof. Philippe A. Guye, 1862-1922; William Kellner, 1839-1922; George William MacDonald; Lionel William Stansell, 1861-1922. In: Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions. 121, 1922, pp. 2898-2916, doi: 10.1039 / CT9222102898 .
  5. ^ Henry E. Armstrong: The Particulate Nature of Enzymic and Zymic Change. In: Journal of the Institute of Brewing. 27, 1921, pp. 197-202, doi: 10.1002 / j.2050-0416.1921.tb02481.x .
  6. ↑ Journal of the Institute of Brewing 27, 1921, pp. 197-260, doi: 10.1002 / jib.1921.27.issue-5 (free full text).
  7. ↑ Robert S. Breed et al .: Bergey's manual of determinative bacteriology . 7th edition. Williams & Wilkins Co., Baltimore 1957, p. 186 , doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.10728 ( online ).
  8. ^ Keith J. Laidler: A brief history in enzyme kinetics . In: A. Cornish-Bowden (Ed.): New Beer in an Old Bottle: Eduard Buchner and the Growth of Biochemical Knowledge . Valencia 1997, p. 127-133 ( online [PDF; 38 kB ]).
  9. ↑ Ludwig Narcissus , Werner Back : The beer brewery. Volume 1: The technology of malt preparation John Wiley & Sons , 2012, ISBN 978-3-527-32532-0
  10. ↑ unknown: Obituaries . In: Journal of the Institute of Brewing . tape 25 , no. 6 , 1919, pp. 323–328 , doi : 10.1002 / j.2050-0416.1919.tb04810.x .
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Adrian John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British brewer and biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Burton-upon-Trent
DATE OF DEATH July 2, 1919
Place of death Turramurra