Florence Bell (biochemist)

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Florence Ogilvy Bell , later Florence Sawyer , (born May 1, 1913 in London ; † November 23, 2000 in Hereford ) was a British biophysicist and biochemist who made early contributions to the elucidation of the structure of DNA. She worked as an X-ray structure analyst in the laboratory of William Astbury . In 1938 she published an article together with Astbury in Nature in which she qualified the DNA structure as a "pile of pennies" as a "pile of pennies". Florence Bell was qualified as the other Dark Lady of DNA in the history of science literature after Rosalind Franklin .

life and work

education

Florence Ogilvy Bell was born in London as the second daughter of the photographer and later advertising specialist Thomas Bell and his wife Annie Mary Lucas. She grew up in London and attended Haberdashers' Aske Girls School in Acton . From 1932 to 1935 she studied science at Girton College , Cambridge. Here she concentrated her training on the subjects of physics, chemistry and mineralogy. In particular, it was introduced to the X-ray structure analysis of biological molecules here by John Desmond Bernal . She moved to the University of Manchester , where she worked with Lawrence Bragg on X-ray structure analysis of proteins.

In 1937, William Astbury asked Lawrence Bragg for a good X-ray structure analyst. Bragg recommended Florence Bell as an "excellent candidate". That same year, Bell moved to Astbury's Institute at the University of Leeds . Her initial work included the structural representation of protein multilayers using X-ray structure analysis. After Astbury's laboratory in Leeds received samples of highly purified DNA, Astbury gave Florence Bell the task of studying the structure of DNA as the second part of her doctorate. Florence Bell received a Ph.D. for this work. Her scientific notebook and work are kept in a special collection at the University of Leeds.

The research of Florence Bell

William Astbury's original scientific assignment for Florence Bell was on the physics of textiles. A change in the keratin structure from the alpha to the beta form was found here when wool textiles were stretched. In 1939, Florence Bell gave a lecture on the physics of textiles at a conference of the Physics Institute at the University of Leeds. In 1937, Bell's supervisor, Astbury, became interested in DNA as a research object. He directed Florence Bell to study this biological molecule. Bell developed a method of stretching the fibers and was able to produce dried films of purified DNA. She took X-ray diffraction photos of these preparations, which showed the structure of the DNA more clearly than any previous method. Their work showed that DNA had a regular, ordered structure with a periodicity of 3.3-3.4 Å along the axis. Bell examined nucleic acids from yeast, pancreas, tobacco mosaic virus and calf thymus. She recognized that "the beginnings of life are clearly linked to the interaction of proteins and nucleic acids". Bell and Astbury published an X-ray study of DNA in 1938, in which the nucleotides were described as the "pile of pennies". Astbury presented Bell's work at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States. At this point, Bell and Astbury were unaware that DNA changes its A conformation to a B conformation under moisture. Correspondingly, Bell's images are more blurred than later images by Raymond Gosling around 1952. The X-ray examinations of biological macromolecules by Bell and Astbury have been reported in conference reports such as "X-ray and the Stoichiochemistry of Proteins", "An X-ray Study of Thymonucleic Acid" and " Optical and X-ray Examination and Direct Measurement of Built-up Protein Multilayers ”.

World War II and what followed

During the Second World War , Florence Bell was drafted as a radio operator for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force . The University of Leeds and William Astbury struggled to get Bell back into the lab and keep her job there open. But Florence Bell fell in love with the American soldier, Captain James Herbert Sawyer. She wrote to Astbury and Leeds University that she was getting married and moving to the United States. Bell and Sawyer were married on December 21, 1942 at St. Mary's Church , Ambleside . Florence Bell then moved to the States with her husband. She initially took a position with the British Air Commission in Washington DC. She later worked as an industrial chemist for Magnolia Petroleum Company in Beaumont , Texas, Texas.

Appreciation

Florence Bell's DNA research showed that DNA had a regular, ordered structure that could be examined using X-ray crystallographic methods. Although some features of Bell's DNA model were found to be incorrect, it had laid the foundation for later research by Maurice Wilkins , Rosalind Franklin, and Raymond Gosling . She also provided James Watson and Francis Crick with their key measurements of the distance between two neighboring bases as they began to construct their DNA model. It must also be mentioned that Florence Bell carried out her DNA research at a time when most researchers still believed that proteins were responsible for inheritance and that DNA only had a structural meaning in this process on the basis of monotonous base sequences.

Florence Bell was recognized with a biographical article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Florence Bell died in Hereford on November 23, 2000.

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References and comments

  1. ↑ The article is based closely on the corresponding article on the English language Wikipedia.
  2. ↑ a b c d Gareth Williams: Unraveling the Double Helix . New York 2019, ISBN 978-1-64313-215-0 , pp. 159-162 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Kersten Hall (University of Leeds): Florence Bell: The Other 'Dark Lady of DNA'?
  4. ↑ Rosalind Franklin's biographer Brenda Maddox coined the term The Dark Lady of DNA because Rosalind Franklin's DNA research played a key role in the structure elucidation of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick. This achievement by Franklin was not recognized in any way at the time. These statements apply all the more to Florence Bell, on whose work Rosalind Franklin's research was based.
  5. ^ A b c K. T. Butler: Girton College Register, 1869-1946 . Cambridge: Privately printed, 1948, p. 456.
  6. ^ Oxford dictionary of national biography. , British Academy., Oxford University Press., Online. Edition, ISBN 9780198614128 , OCLC 56568095 .
  7. ↑ a b c Michael Fry: Landmark experiments in molecular biology . Academic Press, London 2016, ISBN 978-0-12-802108-8 ( worldcat.org ).
  8. ↑ a b Florence Bell: X-ray and related studies of the structure of the proteins and nucleic acids . University of Leeds. 1939.
  9. ↑ Florence Bell's PhD Thesis , Museum of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Leeds, 2010. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  10. ^ Laboratory notebook of Florence Ogilvy Bell - Library | University of Leeds ( en-GB )
  11. ↑ a b c Kersten Hall: William Astbury and the biological significance of nucleic acids, 1938–1951 . In: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences . 42, No. 2, 2011, ISSN  1369-8486 , pp. 119-128. doi : 10.1016 / j.shpsc.2010.11.018 . PMID 21486649 .
  12. ↑ Martin Wainwright: Sidelined scientist who came close to discovering DNA is celebrated at last ( en ) November 23, 2010.
  13. ^ WT Astbury, Florence O. Bell: X-Ray Study of Thymonucleic Acid . In: Nature . 141, No. 3573, 1938, ISSN  0028-0836 , pp. 747-748. doi : 10.1038 / 141747b0 .
  14. ↑ Olby, Robert C. (Robert Cecil): The path to the double helix: the discovery of DNA . Dover Publications, New York 1994, ISBN 9780486166599 , OCLC 608936643 .
  15. ^ WT Astbury, Florence O. Bell: Some Recent Developments in the X-Ray Study of Proteins and Related Structures . In: Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology . 6, January 1, 1938, ISSN  0091-7451 , pp. 109-121. doi : 10.1101 / SQB.1938.006.01.013 .
  16. ^ Kersten T. Hall: The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double-helix . Oxford University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870459-1 , p. 105.
  17. ↑ James D. Watson: The Double Helix . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968, p. 54.
personal data
SURNAME Bell, Florence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bell, Florence Ogilvy (full name); Sawyer, Florence (marriage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British X-ray structure analyst
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 2000
Place of death Hereford