Peter D. Mitchell

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Peter Dennis Mitchell (born September 29, 1920 in Mitcham ( Surrey , England), † April 10, 1992 in Bodmin ( Cornwall , England)) was a British chemist who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on energy conversion in cells .

Life

Mitchell studied at Cambridge University and received his doctorate there in 1950 with James F. Danielli . From 1955 to 1963 he was director of the Department of Chemistry and Biology at the Zoological Institute at Edinburgh University . In 1954 he became director of research at Glynn Research Laboratories .

He studied the mitochondria , the "power plants" of the living cell. He formulated the chemiosmotic theory , which as the "Mitchell hypothesis" was controversial for a long time and was sometimes fiercely opposed. Meanwhile, Mitchell's discovery of chemiosmotic coupling has become an important cornerstone of modern life sciences. She explains how the transport of protons through a biomembrane is used in the cell to convert adenosine diphosphate (ADP) to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as an energy source . He coined the term proticity to emphasize the analogy between proton flux and electric current .

In 1975 Mitchell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 1977 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1978 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of chemiosmotic coupling . In 1981 Mitchell received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society . In 1989 he became an external member ( associé étranger ) of the Académie des sciences .

literature

  • P. Mitchell: Coupling of phosphorylation to electron and hydrogen transfer by a chemi-osmotic type of mechanism. In: Nature. Volume 191, 1961, pp. 144-148. PMID 13771349
  • P. Mitchell: Keilin's respiratory chain concept and its chemiosmotic consequences. In: Science. Volume 206, No. 4423, 1979, pp. 1148-1159. PMID 388618
  • John Prebble, Bruce Weber: Wandering in the Gardens of the Mind: Peter Mitchell and the Making of Glynn. [Biography]. Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-514266-7

See also

History of ATP synthase

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Peter D. Mitchell at academictree.org, accessed on January 3, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Mitchell, Peter D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mitchell, Peter Dennis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Mitcham ( Surrey , England)
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1992
Place of death Bodmin ( Cornwall , England)