David C. Phillips

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David Chilton Phillips, Baron Phillips of Ellesmere , (born March 7, 1924 in Ellesmere (Shropshire) , † February 23, 1999 in London ) was a British chemist.

Life

Phillips was the son of a tailor and Methodist preacher. He studied mathematics, physics and electrical engineering at the University College of South Wales and Monmouth, interrupting his service as a radar officer in the Royal Navy from 1944 to 1947. He then continued his studies at Cardiff University, where he did his doctorate with Arthur JC Wilson with X-ray structure studies. 1951 to 1955 he was at the National Research Council in Ottawa in Canada and then from 1956 to 1966 researcher at the Royal Institution in London. In 1968 he became professor of molecular biophysics at Oxford University , where he stayed until his retirement in 1990. From 1979 he was there Fullerian Professor of Physiology and 1966 to 1990 Fellow of the Corpus Christi College. He died of cancer in 1999.

He is known for X-ray structure studies of biologically important molecules. In particular, in 1965 he clarified the structure and antibacterial effect of the enzyme lysozyme . This was the first X-ray structure determination of an enzyme. But he was also involved in the first elucidation of the structure of a protein with X-ray structure analysis in 1958, that of myoglobin , for which John Kendrew received the Nobel Prize.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1967 , its Vice-President from 1972 to 1973 and 1976 to 1983, and its Secretary for Biology from 1976 to 1983. In 1979 he became a Knight Bachelor and in 1989 KBE . In 1994 he received the Dignity of Life Peers as Baron Phillips of Ellesmere , of Ellesmere in the County of Shropshire, and thus became a member of the House of Lords , where he presided over the Science and Technology Committee. In this role he is also said to have been responsible for the early connection of the British Parliament to the World Wide Web . He has also been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1968 , the National Academy of Sciences since 1985 and the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1991 . In 1979 he received the Prix ​​Charles-Léopold Mayer , in 1987 the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, and in 1991 the Gregori Aminoff Prize .

He was married to Diana Hutchinson since 1960, with whom he had a daughter.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JC Kendrew, G. Bodo, HM Dintzis, RG Parrish, H. Wyckoff, DC Phillips: A three-dimensional model of the myoglobin molecule obtained by x-ray analysis, Nature, Volume 181, 1958, pp. 662-666
  2. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed March 29, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Phillips, David C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Phillips, David Chilton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Ellesmere (Shropshire)
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1999
Place of death London