Sam Perry

This article is about rugby player and biochemist Sam Perry. For other people, see Samuel Perry .

Samuel "Sam" Victor Perry (born July 16, 1918 on the Isle of Wight , † December 17, 2009 in Pembrokeshire ) was a British rugby player and biochemist .

biography

Studies, World War II and imprisonment

Perry, who grew up in Southport , studied biochemistry at the University of Liverpool , which at the time was one of only three universities in the UK offering undergraduate studies in this relatively new scientific discipline, which involved chemical processes studied within living organisms . During his studies he also met his lifelong friend and future Nobel Prize in Medicine, Rodney R. Porter . Both students completed their studies magna cum laude in 1939 , but because the Second World War broke out, they were unable to begin the intended postgraduate studies .

At the beginning of the war he joined an artillery regiment and was soon promoted to second lieutenant . As such, he was deployed against the German Wehrmacht's Africa campaign under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel . In 1942 he was captured near Derna in Libya ; he spent the following years until the end of the war as a prisoner of war in camps in Modena and Padula ( Italy ), in Germany and Silesia , where he managed to escape several times. After the advance of the Red Army on Silesia he was supposed to be transferred to a prison camp in Braunschweig in 1944 . During the transfer he escaped for the third time; However, he was caught again and brought before a court martial in Hildesheim . Although the Geneva Conventions meant that prisoners of war were not normally punished for fleeing, he was sentenced to one month of solitary confinement for damaging the property of the Deutsche Reichsbahn during the escape. As a result, however, he was spared the fate of his fellow prisoners, many of whom were killed after a bomb was dropped by the United States Air Force on the prison camp in Braunschweig.

During his 1165 days in captivity, he devoted himself to private studies of biochemistry and agrochemistry in Padula by reading specialist books and magazines such as the Annual Review of Biochemistry sent with the help of the Red Cross .

University professor and national rugby player

After the end of the Second World War he returned to Great Britain, where he graduated from the University of Cambridge and received a Philosophiae Doctor ( Ph.D. ) from the renowned scientist Kenneth Bailey . In doing so, he not only earned a great reputation for his dissertation on muscle research, but also the Trinity College research award . During this time he was one of a number of young scientists who shared a laboratory, along with Porter and another long-time friend, who would later become Frederick Sanger , a two -time Nobel Prize in Chemistry . After receiving his doctorate, he began working as a lecturer at Cambridge University.

During this time he not only became a member of the rugby team at Cambridge University, but was also used seven more times in the national team after his debut in an international match against Wales in Cardiff on January 18, 1947.

In 1948 he married the actress and painter Maureen Shaw, who portrayed him several times throughout his life.

After about ten years at Cambridge University, he accepted a position as professor and head of the newly created department of biochemistry at the University of Birmingham , to which he was also followed by many of his students. In the following decades he expanded this department further with the disciplines of medicinal biochemistry and physiological chemistry and retired as emeritus in 1985 after teaching for more than 25 years . During his teaching and research activities, he devoted himself to research into proteins in skeletons and heart muscles , which was also fundamental to the diagnosis and treatment of heart diseases in modern medicine. Through his work, he also supported the treatment of those suffering from muscular dystrophy .

For around 30 years, Professor Perry was a member of the Medical Research Committee of the Muscular Dystrophy Group of Great Britain and Ireland , from which today's muscular dystrophy campaign emerged. He was also Chairman of the British Heart Foundation and the Biochemical Society.

In 1974 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his special services .

After retiring, he continued his research work for several years with the support of his longtime assistant Val Patchell. During his teaching and research activities, he published more than 300 scientific articles.

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