Paul M. Doty

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Mead Doty (born June 1, 1920 in Charleston (West Virginia) , † December 5, 2011 ) was an American biochemist and disarmament expert.

Life

Doty studied at Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor's degree in 1941 and at Columbia University with a master's degree in 1943. With Joseph Edward Mayer , he received his doctorate in 1944 with the topic The electron affinity of bromine and a study of its decomposition on hot tungsten . During this time he was an instructor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he became an assistant professor in 1945. In 1946/47 he was a Rockefeller Fellow at Cambridge University . In 1946 he was Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame and in 1948 Assistant Professor and in 1956 Professor at Harvard University . In 1968 he founded the faculty of biochemistry and molecular biology at Harvard and was its first chairman. Before that (1961) he brought James Watson to Harvard and was a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows from 1963 to 1980. He was Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry and Director and in 1973 founder of the Center for Science and International Affairs (later Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs ) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He retired in 1988 and 1990 (Kennedy School of Government).

He pursued two careers, one in biochemistry and the other in international disarmament issues.

biochemistry

In the mid-1940s, he and Bruno H. Zimm applied light scattering to determine the size and shape of polymers in Hermann F. Mark's laboratory (Zimm plot). This was later extended to proteins and nucleic acids and Doty investigated, among other things, the melting of DNA (dissolution of the double strand at higher temperatures) and demonstrated the reversal, hybridization of DNA. In the case of RNA single strands, he demonstrated internal hybridization, so that this was shorter than expected based on the number of bases. He also determined the shape of certain proteins such as collagen in his laboratory .

Of the 66 students he supervised, 44 became professors and of his 85 post-doctoral students, 33 became professors.

Disarmament issues

He was interested in disarmament issues early on. His interest arose when he was a marginal student involved in isotope separation research in the Manhattan Project . In 1957 he was chairman of the Federation of American Scientists and was involved in the first Pugwash conferences . In 1958 he made his first of many trips to the Soviet Union and in 1960 he became a member of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee (PSAC). He founded a committee at the National Academy of Sciences for scientific exchange with the Soviet Union and organized the Pugwash Conferences in Moscow in 1960 and in the USA in 1961. This also led to friendships with leading Soviet scientists such as Peter Kapitza . From 1964 he moved his activities from the Pugwash Conferences to bilateral groups of scientists from the Soviet Union and the USA, which he led with the Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences MD Millionschikow. The group played an important role in the preparation of the ABM contract . Doty became an advisor (Special Assistant) to the US President for national security, advising Henry Kissinger in this capacity . Later he was a member of the US President's Advisory Group on Arms Control. From 1971 to 1984 he led summer arms control workshops at the Aspen Institute, which then became the Aspen Strategy Group. From 1976 he continued the workshops in the newly founded Aspen Center in Berlin. In 1973 he founded the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard and was its chairman for a long time, and he founded the magazine International Security . In the 1970s and 1980s, he was also involved in the Dartmouth Conferences, founded in 1960, for dialogue with the USSR and in the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC). In the 1990s he was active in the George Soros Foundation to support Soviet scientists.

Honors and memberships

In 1956 he received the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry . In 1966 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago. He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1951). Since 1970 he was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1959/60 he gave the Harvey Lecture .

Others

He is married to the biochemist Helga Boedtker, with whom he also worked (for example on collagen).

He was one of the founders of the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1959 and, with Hermann Mark, of the Journal of Polymer Science in 1945 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Paul Mead Doty at academictree.org, accessed on January 30, 2018.
  3. ↑ Tenure , i.e. permanent position, from 1950
  4. ^ Member History: Paul Mead Doty. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 19, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Doty, Paul M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Doty, Paul Mead
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 2011