Charles Robert Harington

Sir Charles Robert Harington ( August 1, 1897 - February 4, 1972 ) was a British organic chemist and biochemist. He was best known for the synthesis of thyroxine , which was accomplished in 1926. The thyroid hormone was isolated from the tissue of distant organs by Edward Calvin Kendall in 1914 and its properties were described. The synthetic production enabled the large-scale production and broad medical-therapeutic use of the hormone.

Life

Harington studied at Cambridge University and then at Edinburgh University with George Barger . After a short stay in the USA, he attended the Medical School of University College London from 1922 . In 1928 he became reader and professor of chemical pathology at University College London and from 1942 to 1962 he was director of the National Institute for Medical Research, succeeding Henry Hallett Dale .

In addition to the synthesis and elucidation of the structure of thyroxine in 1926, he also synthesized glutathione . He has always had an interest in the applications of chemistry in medicine and later dealt with, among other things, immunochemistry .

In 1931 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Royal Medal was awarded in 1944. In the same year he also gave the Croonian Lecture of the Royal Society. In 1951 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . He was honorary doctorate from Cambridge University and Paris University . In 1948 he was knighted and in 1953 he became KBE . In 1951 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He was also the editor of the Biochemical Journal .

Web links

• Obituary by A. Neuberger, Biochemical Journal, Volume 129, 1972, pp. 801–804, PMC 1174224 (free full text)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ entry on Harington; Sir; Charles Robert (1897-1972) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
2. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 16, 2019 .