Harold Raistrick

Harold Raistrick (born November 26, 1890 in Pudsey , † March 8, 1971 in Felpham ) was a British biochemist .

Raistrick was the son of a mechanic in a wool factory. He studied chemistry from 1908 at the University of Leeds with a bachelor's degree (B. Sc.) In 1912 and a master's degree in 1913 and at the University of Cambridge with a BA in 1916. He then studied the amino acid metabolism of E. coli at the Medical Research Committee and received his PhD in Leeds in 1920 (D. Sc.). He then went to Nobel Explosives in Ardeer , where he worked on the biochemical production of glycerol and other substances. In 1929 he became a professor of biochemistry at the University of London , which he remained until his retirement in 1956.

As a pioneer in the study of the metabolism of bacteria and fungi, he dealt with penicillin as early as 1934 , but gave up research because he considered it chemically unstable. He succeeded Alexander Fleming , who also did not pursue the research after the first publication in 1929, and the doctor Cecil Paine , who successfully treated some bacterial eye infections with penicillin at Sheffield Hospital in 1930, but then also gave up because of its instability. The abandonment of a recognized expert in fungal biochemistry like Raistrick also served to discourage other researchers from studying penicillin. The real breakthrough came at the end of the 1930s by Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Boris Chain . During World War II Raistrick was on the penicillin committee and continued his research on it.

In 1949 he gave the Bakerian Lecture .

literature

• Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989