Peter Martin Brabazon Walker

Peter Martin Brabazon Walker (born May 1, 1922 in Kenya ; † January 16, 2006 ) was Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh from 1965 to 1980 .

Life

Walker was born in Kenya on May 1, 1922, the son of coffee farmers Ernest Walker and Mildred Kathrine Grace Heaton-Ellis. In order to be able to enjoy a school education in England , Walker grew up mainly with his grandparents and finished his school days just at the beginning of the Second World War . This gave him no opportunity to study and began training at Smith Aircraft Instruments , now the Smiths Group . Walker would use the skills and knowledge acquired there in his future scientific work as well as in his hobby, model railways .

After the war ended, his family moved to Cambridge and Walker began studying natural history , botany and zoology at Trinity College . Upon graduation, he was offered a fellowship from the Medical Research Council (MRC) to join John Randall's biophysics team at King's College London . Back then, King's was a key research area. At that time, Maurice Wilkins and Rosie Franklin examined the structures of deoxyribonucleic acid with the help of crystal structure analysis , while Francis Crick and James Watson nervously waited for the results in Cambridge .

It is certain that the spirit of optimism at the time also infected the young Walker and influenced his scientific career. Walker became increasingly interested in the new field of molecular biology . In London Walker began developing a recording Microdensitometer . At that time, the structure of DNA was still waiting to be discovered. But you knew you were dealing with genetic material . Walker's measuring instrument was already able, through comparative measurements, to reveal the differences in cells that were identified by the doubling of DNA shortly before cell division . Walker published this work with John Murdoch Mitchison .

In 1958, Walker moved to the University of Edinburgh , where Mitchinson and Michael Swann built a cell research and molecular biology team. He gave up the fellowship at the MRC and took on a readership at the university. In 1966 he succeeded Michael Swann on the chair of professor of natural history when Swann was appointed head of the university. Walker shared with Mitchinson the tasks that a growing institute placed on them. He built a team to study nucleic acids , still with the support of the MRC . He began developing a newer model of his desitometer that would also have allowed the quantitative determination of genetic material, but this work was never completed.

After the discovery of DNA, knowledge grew exponentially . Walker began research on the treatment of denatured DNA with Anne McLaren from Edinburgh's genetics department .

In 1980 Walker retired from the professorship and worked alternately between scientific projects, his hobby and private ventures.

Honors

Walker was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1976. Walker became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w} Aubrey Manning and Murdoch Mitchison: Peter Martin Brabazon Walker. In: Obituary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 16, 2018 .  
2. ↑ unknown: Regius Chair of Natural History. In: University of Edinburgh website. November 4, 2016, accessed December 16, 2018 .  
3. ↑ unknown: Supplement to the London Gazette of Friday, 4th June 1976. In: London Gazette. June 12, 1976, p. 8023 , accessed December 16, 2018 (English).