Murdoch Mitchison

John Murdoch Mitchison (born June 11, 1922 in Oxford , † March 17, 2011 in Edinburgh ) was a British cell biologist and long-time professor of zoology at the University of Edinburgh , who became the best known expert on the cell cycle of yeasts .

Life

Family tree of the Haldane-Mitchison family

Mitchison came from an intellectual family of politicians and scientists. His father Dick Mitchison was a member of the House of Commons and the House of Lords for the Labor Party and was disappointed that Prime Minister Harold Wilson did not appoint him to his cabinet as Secretary of Science in 1964 despite a previous promise. His maternal grandfather was the physiologist John Scott Haldane , who is considered the founder of methodical holism , while his brother, Mitchison's great-uncle, Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane was Lord Chancellor twice . His mother was the writer Naomi Mitchison , who was a sister of the theoretical biologist and geneticist and co-founder of population genetics J. BS Haldane .

His older brother Denis Mitchison was a professor of bacteriology at the University of London , while his younger brother Avrion Mitchison is a zoologist who has made major contributions to the understanding of immunological responses to infections , allergies and autoimmune diseases .

Mitchison visited with a grant from the Winchester College , where he had chemistry -classes Eric James, later Lord James of Rusholme, which the 1959 first Vice Chancellor York University was. In 1939 he began his studies at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge and graduated as valedictorian lectures in zoology from. One of his professors was Edgar Adrian , who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1932 and became head of Trinity College in 1951.

In 1941 he was called up for military service in the British Army , where he served in the operations research department and was promoted to major in 1946 . In 1947 he married the historian Rosalind "Rowy" Mary Wrong , who wrote numerous specialist books on the social history of Scotland .

After his release, he became a Research Fellow at Trinity College in 1950 and held this position until 1954. During this time he wrote numerous articles in journals such as Birefringence in Amoebae , The Mechanical Properties of the Cell Surface , The status of haemoglobin in sickle-cell anemia , The mechanism of cleavage in animal cells and Differentiation in the Cell Cycle . In the 1950s he introduced the Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a model organism in cell biology.

Having long from 1953 to 1963 ten years lecturer was, he was then a quarter of a century from 1963 to 1988 Professor of Zoology at the University of Edinburgh. In the words of his predecessor Michael Swann, he was "the scientist who knew more about the yeast cell cycle than anyone else in the world". As a pioneer in cell biology, he researched the growth mechanism and the cell cycle. His staff also included the biochemist Paul Nurse , who received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

He was also President of the British Society for Cell Biology from 1964 to 1972 and an outstanding member of the Working Group on Biological Workforce from 1968 to 1971 and of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution from 1974 to 1988.

Mitchison was a member of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

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personal data
SURNAME	Mitchison, Murdoch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Mitchison, John Murdoch (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British zoologist and cell biologist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 11, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oxford
DATE OF DEATH	March 17, 2011
Place of death	Edinburgh