Norman Pirie

Norman Wingate "Bill" Pirie , (born July 1, 1907 in Torrance , Stirlingshire , † March 29, 1997 in Harpenden , Hertfordshire ) was a British biochemist and virologist.

He was the son of the animal painter Sir George Pirie. He studied biochemistry with Gowland Hopkins at Cambridge University (Emmanuel College) and became a demonstrator there after graduating from 1932 to 1940. It was here that he met Frederick Bawden and became interested in plant viruses. The collaboration lasted until Bawden's death in 1972. He followed Bawden in 1940 to the Rothamsted Experimental Station in Harpenden, where they were able to isolate several plant viruses in crystalline form, including the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). In doing so, they discovered that their genome consisted of RNA . They also examined the infectivity of viral RNA, but received negative results at the time (it was not until 1956 that evidence was found). At a meeting of the Royal Society, he demonstrated crystals from TMV through their birefringence properties as suspensions in liquids (effectively stirred up by goldfish). From 1947 to 1973 he headed the biochemistry department in Rothamsted.

From the end of the 1950s, he was concerned with the extraction of proteins from leaves in order to develop a new source of food. Work on this began in England as early as World War II. He and his team developed various machines to prepare leaves as a source of food, which have also been tested in developing countries, but which have found little acceptance. He then turned to beta-carotene in leaves, along with his wife, the biochemist Antoinette Pirie. Here, too, the main target was developing countries where deficiency in provitamin A led to blindness. He also published popular science essays on the origin of life and space travel, among other things.

In 1949 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Copley Medal he received in 1971 and whose Leuwenhoek Lecture he held in 1963.

He was married to Antoinette (Tony) Pirie since 1931, who died in 1991. They had a son and a daughter.

Fonts

• Food resources: conventional and novel , Penguin 1969
• Published by Food protein sources , Cambridge University Press 1975
• Published in: Leaf protein: its agronomy, preparation, quality and use , Blackwell 1971
• Leaf protein and other aspects of fodder fractionation , Cambridge University Press 1978
• Leaf protein and its by-products in human and animal nutrition , Cambridge University Press 1987

Web link

• Obituary in the Independent