Archibald Byron Macallum

Archibald Byron Macallum

Archibald Byron Macallum (born April 7, 1858 in Belmont (Ontario) , † April 5, 1934 in London (Ontario) ) was a Canadian biochemist.

Macallum was one of twelve children of a farmer and immigrant from Scotland (Gaelic was spoken at home). He first became a teacher in 1874, saving money to study natural sciences, and specifically biology , at the University of Toronto . He earned his bachelor's degree in 1880 and became a lecturer in biology at the University of Toronto in 1883 . In 1888 he received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and in 1890 received his bachelor's degree in medicine (MB) from the University of Toronto. In 1890 he became professor of physiology in Toronto and in 1908 of biochemistry. In 1917 he left the university to organize the National Research Council of Canada, of which he was the founder. In 1920 he became a professor at McGill University in Montreal , where he retired in 1928.

Macallum developed microchemical methods to measure the content of iron, phosphorus, potassium and chloride ions in tissue and body fluids and their locally different distribution. He found concentrations of sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium ions in many lower animals that are similar to the concentrations in seawater and assumed that the composition corresponds to that at the origin of life in the primordial ocean. In the case of vertebrates with a lower concentration, he considered this to be evidence of the early development on land from the Silurian onwards (in his opinion, the concentration in the sea would have been lower in the Silurian).

In 1930 he received the Flavelle Medal. He was a member of the Royal Society and, since 1930, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

literature

• Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989, p. 286