Norman Heatley

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Norman George Heatley (born January 10, 1911 in Woodbridge (Suffolk) , † January 5, 2004 in Marston (Oxfordshire) near Oxford ) was a British biochemist who was involved in the development of the industrial production of penicillin as an antibiotic.

Life

Heatley went to school in Folkestone and Tonbridge and studied science at Cambridge University (St. John's College) with a bachelor's degree in 1933 and a doctorate in biochemistry in 1936. He then went to Oxford University , where he was a fellow of Lincoln College and joined the group of Howard Florey , a pathologist, and Ernst Boris Chain , who worked on the production of penicillin in 1938. Chain had made Florey aware of the substance after reading Alexander Fleming's 1929 article . The penicillin had even been present in the laboratory for years as the mold was used to protect petri dishes from bacterial contamination. Heatley made some important contributions to further development and was hired to produce enough penicillin for Chain to study the substance better. His most important contribution was his back-extraction technique ( english back extraction ) for cleaning of penicillin:

Penicillin was destroyed by strong acids and bases, heat and many chemicals. Heatley cooled an extract from the petri dishes with the mold and mixed it with ether. The penicillin was partially purified by dissolving in ether. Contrary to Chain's advice, he now mixed the ether solution with slightly basic water (the penicillin went back into the aqueous solution) and let it freeze-dry. The brownish powder contained around one percent pure penicillin. The amount was enough for animal experiments. On May 25, 1940, Heatley infected eight mice with streptococci and treated half with penicillin. He then stayed in the laboratory until the early hours of the morning until the four untreated mice died. Those treated with penicillin were still alive the next morning when Heatley Florey presented the results. In 1940 there was a first test on a patient (a police officer) who showed the effectiveness, but could not prevent the death of the patient because not enough penicillin was available - despite recovery from the patient's urine.

Heatley had a natural talent for improvisation and inventiveness, and was a skilled craftsman in a wide variety of disciplines. He tinkered with bathtubs, bed pans made of porcelain (in short supply in the war years, but Heatley managed to convince the manufacturer to produce 500 modified ceramic pans) and the like a first production facility for penicillin in order to obtain the necessary amount for human experiments. To do this, he also built an improvised extraction machine. In the spring of 1941, Oxford had produced 2 million units of penicillin, enough for the first tests on human patients. In 1941 he traveled to the USA to increase penicillin production in a laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, in collaboration with AJ Moyer on a large industrial scale. While working together, he noticed that Moyer was becoming more and more closed, but only found out later that, despite agreements to the contrary, he published joint results under his own name and also applied for the patents without him. He then also worked at Merck in New Jersey and did not return to Oxford until July 1942.

Heatley's contribution was not recognized for a long time (Alexander Fleming, Florey and Chain received the Nobel Prize in 1945). It was not until 1990 that he received an honorary doctorate in medicine from Oxford University (the university's first to a non-medical professional). He also became OBE .

The Biochemical Society named the Heatley Prize in his honor.

The Oxford medicine professor Henry Harris summed up the role of Heatley as follows: without Fleming no Chain and Florey, without Chain no Florey, without Florey no Heatley, without Heatley, no penicillin .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Brack, Norman Heatley, the forgotten man of penicillin, The Biochemist, October 2015, p. 36, see web links
personal data
SURNAME Heatley, Norman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heatley, Norman George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Woodbridge (Suffolk)
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 2004
Place of death Marston (Oxfordshire)