Judah H. Quastel

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Juda Hirsch "Harry" Quastel (born October 2, 1899 in Sheffield , United Kingdom , † October 15, 1987 in Vancouver , Canada ) was a British-Canadian biochemist and neuroscientist . Quastel is considered to be one of the founders of neurochemistry .

Life

Quastel was the oldest of five children of the Orthodox Jewish emigrants Jonas and Flora (née Itcovitz) Quastel from Tarnopol , East Galicia , today Ukraine . His father ran a candy store in Sheffield.

From 1917 to 1919 Quastel worked for the British Army as a laboratory assistant for microbiology and pathology at St. Georges Hospital . Quastel studied chemistry at Imperial College London , in 1921 he earned a bachelor's degree and in 1926 a Doctor of Science . In 1924 he had acquired a PhD with theses on the metabolism of bacteria at the University of Cambridge from the later Nobel Prize winner Frederick Gowland Hopkins . Quastel remained associated with Cambridge University as a Fellow of Trinity College .

From 1930 to 1941 Quastel was director of research at the Cardiff City Mental Hospital . From 1941 Quastel worked for the Agricultural Research Council (ARC, Rothamsted Research ).

In 1947 Quastel went to Canada. In Montreal , he became Professor of Biochemistry at McGill University and Director of the Montreal General Hospital Research Institute . In 1966 he moved to the Psychiatry Department of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver as a professor of neurochemistry . In 1983 he retired .

Quastel was considered a staunch Zionist . From 1950 he worked as governor (member of the supervisory board) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .

Quastels first wife Henrietta (born Jungmann), which he in 1931 during a visit to Basel at Markus Guggenheim had known, died in 1973 from cancer. He had a daughter and two sons with her: Michael R. Quastel is Professor of Physiology at Ben Gurion University in the Negev in Israel, David MJ Quastel is Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Juda Quastel was married to Susan Ricardo in 1975.

Act

In 1927/1928 Quastel put forward the thesis of the active center of an enzyme . He discovered the competitive inhibition of enzymes by analogues of the respective substrate . Quastel introduced suspensions of Escherichia coli as the subject of biochemical studies on living cells. For the first time he was able to identify biochemical causes of mental disorders . Quastel coined the term " phenylketonuria ". In 1936 he showed that acetylcholine is also synthesized in the brain. Quastel was able to show that sodium is necessarily involved in energy-consuming transport processes in the cell (known today as the sodium-potassium pump ).

Quastel et al. Discovered in 1937 that the brain has a system to oxidize biogenic amines by removing the amino group ( deamination ).

Together with HG Thornton and P. Nutman, Quastel developed selective herbicides as derivatives of indole-3-acetic acid , including 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid , which was later used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War . Further agricultural studies dealt with artificial soil improvers .

Later work of his group dealt with membrane transport , amino acid metabolism , interactions of carbohydrates and amino acids in the brain, tumor metabolism , phagocytosis , absorption of sugars or the metabolism of glutamic acid .

Quastel published more than 370 scientific publications . He led more than 70 candidates to PhD .

Fonts (selection)

  • 1961 The chemistry of brain metabolism in health and disease.

Awards (selection)

There is an annual Judah Quastel guest lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . There is a Judah Quastel visiting professor at McGill University .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-803923-5 , p. 144; limited preview in Google Book search
  2. ^ Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada (rsc-src.ca); Retrieved November 14, 2013
  3. ↑ Honorary Doctorates at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (huji.ac.il); Retrieved November 13, 2013
  4. ^ Juda H. Quastel, CC, Ph.D. with the Governor General of Canada (vg.ca); Retrieved November 13, 2013
  5. ^ Past Award Winners at the Royal Society of Canada (rsc-src.ca); accessed on April 21, 2019
  6. ^ Judah H. Quastel CC, PhD, DSc, FRSC, FRS at the Gairdner Foundation (gairdner.org); Retrieved November 14, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Quastel, Juda H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Quastel, Judah; Quastel, Juda Hirsch; Quastel, Harry; Quastel, Judah H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Canadian biochemist and neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheffield , UK
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1987
Place of death Vancouver , Canada