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581 [901] HAFFKINE
BAYLISS [902] at the Connecticut Agricultural Experi ment Station, and slowly shifted in the direction of biochemistry. His study of proteins obtained from different seeds led him finally to a posi tion contradicting Liebig’s [532] early feeling that there were only a few different proteins. Proteins, instead, clearly existed in many, many subtly different varieties. For one thing, they were different in amino acid content and Osborne showed that difference in nutri tional properties were dependent on differences in amino acid content. He showed, for instance, that lysine and tryptophan could not be synthesized by rats but had to be present in the diet protein. Osborne also discovered what later came to be called vitamin A but McCol lum [1062] published his independent finding three weeks earlier and got the credit. It was Osborne, however, who discovered that cod-liver oil was a rich source of the vitamin, thus condemning a generation of American children to the forced consumption of this nauseating compound. [901] HAFFKINE, Waldemar Mordecai Wolfe (haffkin) Russian-British bacteriologist Bom: Odessa, March 15, 1860 Died: Lausanne, Switzerland, October 25, 1930 Haffkine was the son of Jewish par ents. He attended the University of Odessa, where Mechnikov [775] was one of his teachers. He might have joined the faculty of the university afterward, but conversion to Christianity was the condi tion and Haffkine refused. He left Russia and in 1889 was work ing at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, working under Roux [844]. Haffkine was particularly interested in cholera, epi demics of which frequently visited Europe. In 1892 he prepared an at tenuated strain of cholera culture, which he thought might induce immunity with out danger, and injected himself with a concentrated strain to make sure it was without danger. In 1893 he went to India, where chol era was endemic and where it was at the time wreaking havoc. Working under difficult conditions and against the hostil ity of much of the population (which, like people generally, were suspicious of anything new), he inoculated forty-five thousand people and reduced the deathrate by 70 percent among those inoculated. He also attempted to work up a vaccine against the plague. Haffkine’s work met with constant op position from British medical officials even though he was honored by Queen Victoria in 1897 and became a British citizen in 1899. When nineteen people who had been inoculated against plague died of tetanus, Haffkine was accused of responsiblity and five years passed before he was exonerated and the responsibility laid at the door of the carelessness in handling one particular vial of vaccine by the local authorities. [902] BAYLISS, Sir William Maddock English physiologist
shire, May 2, 1860 Died: London, August 27, 1924 Bayliss began medical training at Uni versity College, London, but he had no great taste for it and switched to physi ological research at Oxford. In 1888 he returned to University College as a fac ulty member. His father was a prosper ous iron manufacturer so Bayliss was free of financial insecurity. Like Starling [954] he did much work on the heart and, again like Starling, he published an important text in physiol ogy. In 1893 he married Starling’s sister, and thereafter he and Starling formed a research team. In particular, he joined with Starling in the discovery of hor mones. He received the Copley medal of the Royal Society, the first physiologist to do so in 180 years. He was knighted in 1922. During World War I he worked on methods for treating wounded soldiers. In 1903 Bayliss considered himself to have been libeled by an antivivisectionist. Bayliss took the person to court and,
[903] BUCHNER
BUCHNER [903] with ease, won £2,000 damages, which he donated to his university for the furtherance of research in physiology. [903] BUCHNER, Eduard (bookh'ner) German chemist Born: Munich, Bavaria, May 20, 1860 Died: Focsani, Romania, August 13, 1917 Eduard Buchner was fortunate in his brother, Hans Buchner [813], ten years his elder. It was Hans who first inter ested Eduard in chemistry and guided him through the initial stages. Eduard studied chemistry under Baeyer [718] and botany under Nageli [598], He ob tained his Ph.D. in 1888 and continued as Baeyer’s assistant until 1893, when he became professor of chemistry at Kiel University. Through his brother, who was a bacte riologist, the younger Buchner became interested in the problem of fermen tation. This was both the oldest and newest of biochemical problems. It was as old as prehistory in the fermenting of fruit juice to form wine and the leaven ing of dough to make bread. On the other hand, it was not until the time of Payen [490] and Schwann [563], a little over half a century before, that the chemist had his hands on samples of the actual “ferments,” the chemical sub stances bringing about these changes in organic materials. There was a question as to the role life played in fermentation. The vitalists had always believed that life obeyed a set of laws peculiar to itself and that the generalizations deduced in the laboratory from the study of inanimate objects did not necessarily apply to living organisms. Their position had been shaken by the synthesis from inorganic materials of an organic substance by Wohler [515] in 1828, and by the synthesis a generation later of organic materials not found in nature by Perkin [734] and those who followed him. The vitalists fell back on fermentation. Whereas organic substances prepared in the laboratory made use of strenuous methods (high temperature, harsh sol vents, and so on), living tissue made use of the mildest conditions: body tempera ture, a watery solution neither acid nor alkaline, and so on. The difference, it ap peared, lay in the fact that living tissue made use of the so-called ferments as catalysts. To be sure, Schwann and others had isolated ferments and showed that they could work in the test tube as ordinary nonliving chemicals. However, said the vitalists, these were ferments involved in digestive processes that took place in the alimentary canal and not within the cell. As for the chemical processes that took place within the cell, such as the conver sion of sugar to alcohol, these, the vi talists held, were inseparable from life and could not be carried through with a system made up of nonliving materials only. Kiihne [725] even suggested that ferments outside the cell be given the special name of “enzymes.” Buchner wondered whether it might not be experimentally demonstrated that alcoholic fermentation was inseparable from life, or at least to present evidence in favor of that view. To do this, it was his intention to grind up yeast cells with sand until not one of them was left alive and to show, if he could, that the pro duction of alcohol from sugar would stop. His superiors viewed this line of ex perimentation with disapproval and ad vised against it, but Buchner persisted. In 1896 he obtained his cell-free yeast juice and filtered it. He then searched for a method to preserve it against bacterial contamination. One method was to add a good thick sugar solution. (In preparing fruit preserves, it is the high concen tration of sugar that “preserves” it against bacteria.) He added the sugar and found that before long, bubbles of carbon dioxide were forming. The com pletely dead yeast juice was rapidly fer menting the sugar, forming carbon diox ide and alcohol, exactly as the intact cells would have done. Intercellular fermentation and life were therefore not inseparable and Buchner had demonstrated the reverse of what he intended. The last stronghold of the vitalists was breached and overthrown. 583 [904] EINTHOVEN BARRINGER
The chemical processes within cells were carried on by no “vital force” but by ferments no different in kind from the ferments associated with chemical activ ity outside the cell. Ferments of all kinds now received Kuhne’s name of “enzyme.” Buchner’s demonstration was assailed by Rubner [848], among others, but Buchner was able to maintain his posi tion and eventually he won out. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his feat and in 1909 be came professor of chemistry at Breslau. There are vitalists even today, but the viewpoint carries with it now a rather strong tinge of mysticism, and it has lit tle if any influence on the course of sci ence. Buchner died in the trenches during World War I. He served as a major in the German army and died of a grenade wound on the Romanian front. He was perhaps the outstanding scientist to be thrown away in this fashion on the side of the Central Powers, as Moseley [1121] was the outstanding loss on the Allied side. (In World War II, the powers learned to hoard their scientists more carefully.) [904] EINTHOVEN, Willem (eyent'- hoh-ven)
Dutch physiologist Bom: Semarang, Java (now part of Indonesia), May 22, 1860 Died: Leiden, September 29, 1927
Einthoven’s father was a practicing physician serving in the East Indies, which was then a Dutch colony. The fa ther died in 1866, and in 1870 the fam ily returned to the Netherlands and set tled in Utrecht. In 1878 Einthoven en tered the University of Utrecht and began the study of medicine, though al ways with considerable interest in phys ics. He obtained his medical degree in 1885 and was at once appointed to a professorship of physiology at the Uni versity of Leiden, serving there the re mainder of his life. The physicist in him provoked his in terest in the tiny electric potentials pro duced in the human body. That these existed had been known ever since the time of Galvani [320] a century earlier, but knowing it and putting the fact to medical use were two different things. The heart, for instance, when in health worked with an integrated rhythm that must be reflected in the electrical poten tials that progressed along its substance. Perhaps a departure from the normal pattern of that progression might be used to diagnose pathological conditions be fore they could be discovered in any other way. The problem was to detect the small currents with sufficient accu racy.
In 1903 Einthoven developed the first string galvanometer. This consisted of a delicate conducting thread stretched across a magnetic field. A current flowing through the thread would cause it to deviate at right angles to the direc tion of the magnetic lines of force, the extent of the deviation being propor tional to the strength of the current. The delicacy of the device was sufficient to make it possible to record the varying electrical potentials of the heart. Einthoven continually improved his device and worked out the significance of the rises and falls in potential. By 1906 he was correlating the recordings of these peaks and troughs (the result being what he called an electrocar diogram) with various types of heart dis orders. It became a valuable means of diagnosis and led the way to a similar tapping of the electric potentials of the brain by Berger [1014]. Further refine ments of technique by Erlanger [1023] and Gasser [1126] elicited still more in formation about the electrical properties of nerve. For the development of elec trocardiography Einthoven was awarded the 1924 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology. [905] BARRINGER, Daniel Moreau American mining engineer and geologist
May 25, 1860 Died: 1929 5 8 4
[906] VILLARD
FINSEN [908] Barringer graduated from Princeton in 1879. He was interested in mining and this drew him out to the mineral-rich West, where he met his destiny in the shape of a crater in Arizona. This crater is nearly round, almost a mile in diameter and about six hundred feet deep. Most people assumed it was an extinct volcano, but to Barringer it looked as though it had been formed by the impact of a large meteorite. This theory, advanced in 1905, was laughed at to begin with, but closer study has made it seem very likely. There are no signs of recent volcanic activity in the vi cinity, whereas a great deal of meteoric material has been obtained all around it. Barringer began mining operations in the hope of finding the main mass of a large iron meteorite, since this might prove a bonanza. After his death in 1929, his son continued the operations, but so far the main mass eludes the diggers. The existence of the Great Barringer Meteor Crater made more dramatic the theory that the lunar craters were formed by meteoric bombardment and it is only earth’s atmosphere that saves it from all but the largest strikes. There are many signs of ancient meteoric craters formed by such large strikes. The Bar ringer Crater is remarkable among them only because it is the most recent and because it is in a desert area where the forces of erosion are unusually slow. [906] VILLARD, Paul Ulrich French physicist
January 13, 1934 Villard obtained his teacher’s license in 1884. His moment of glory came in 1900 when he was studying the uranium radiations that had been discovered four years earlier by A. H. Becquerel [834]. Some of these had already been demon strated to be bent in one direction by a magnetic field and some in another. These consisted of charged particles and were eventually named “alpha rays” and “beta rays” by Rutherford [996], Villard noted that some radiation was not bent in a magnetic field and was unusually penetrating. These came to be called “gamma rays.” They were like X rays in nature but were more energetic and penetrating. [907] SPERRY, Elmer Ambrose American inventor
ber 12, 1860 Died: Brooklyn, New York, June 16, 1930 Sperry, the son of a farmer, was raised by his grandparents after his mother, a schoolteacher, died in childbirth. He spent a year at Cornell University in 1879. The next year, at the age of twenty, he had organized his own com pany to manufacture electrical generat ing equipment and other heavy devices. Of his four hundred patents his most famous involves his development of a gyroscopic compass between 1896 and 1910. A turning gyroscope maintains its plane of rotation and resists being turned out of that plane. A gyroscope mounted on gimbals on a ship in such a way that the ship’s movements would not force it out of its plane could be used as a true north-south compass, subject to none of the variations of the ordinary magnetic compass and not influenced by surround ing iron and steel. It was the first essen tial improvement on the compass in a thousand years. It was first tried on board the battle ship Delaware in 1911 and was adopted almost at once by the navy. Sperry also developed stabilizers for ships and air craft and during World War I invented a high-intensity arc searchlight that the armed forces quickly adopted. [908] FINSEN, Niels Ryberg Danish physician Born: Torshavn, Faeroe Islands, December 15, 1860 Died: Copenhagen, September 24, 1904 Born of Icelandic parents, young Fin sen had his early schooling at Reykjavik, 585 [908] FINSEN
GUILLAUME [910] Iceland, but he traveled to Denmark (which at the time ruled over both Ice land and the Faeroe Islands) for his professional education. He obtained his medical degree in 1891 at the University of Copenhagen. Even as an undergraduate he was in terested in the effect of light on disease, for he himself suffered from a chronic ailment which, he believed, was benefited by sunlight. In 1893 he gained considerable atten tion by claiming that red light was effec tive in ameliorating the effects of small pox. By hanging red curtains on the win dows of sickrooms, he let in the longer “heat waves” and shut out the shorter “chemical waves.” In 1896 he established a Light Insti tute at Copenhagen, which was first sup ported by private sources and then by the Danish government. There he stud ied the “chemical waves” and found that shortwave light obtained from the sun or from a concentration of powerful elec tric lights could kill bacteria in cultures and on the skin. He established, more over, that this was caused by the light it self and was not due to heating effects. In particular he was able to cure lupus
the tubercle bacillus, by irradiation with strong shortwave light. For the purpose he designed a large and powerful arc lamp called the Finsen Light. Some of Finsen’s work with light was rather borderline and has since been abandoned, notably the treatment of smallpox with red light. The discovery of the effect of blue and violet light (and particularly of ultraviolet light) on bac teria was valuable, however. It laid the groundwork for therapy with the still more energetic X rays and gamma rays discovered by Roentgen [774] and A. H. Becquerel [834] at just about the time Finsen was experimenting with his chem ical rays. Finsen’s contribution was rewarded with the 1903 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology. He donated half the prize money to the Light Institute. In delicate and failing health for most of his adult life, Finsen died the next year, still a young man. [909] GOLDSCHMIDT, Johann (Hans) Wilhelm German chemist Born: Berlin, January 18, 1861 Died: Baden-Baden, May 20, 1923
During the nineteenth century many metals had been obtained from their oxides by heating those oxides with so dium or potassium. This was an expen sive procedure. Sainte-Claire Deville [603] had prepared aluminum in this way and he reported that powdered alu minum could then replace sodium or potassium for the purpose. Goldschmidt, who had studied under Bunsen [561], joined his family’s met allurgical business in 1888 and then in vestigated the problem. In 1898 he de scribed the best manner in which it could be done. Aluminum powder mixed with an oxide will, when ignited, react furiously and develop tremendous heat. In the end pure metal is produced. Pure iron and chromium can be prepared in this fashion, for instance. Because of the great heat developed, the oxide/alumi num mixture (called thermite) can be used in welding and for some purposes it is the best form of welding. [910] GUILLAUME, Charles Édouard (gee-yome') Swiss-French physicist
ruary 15, 1861 Died: Sèvres, near Paris, June 13, 1938
In college Guillaume, the son of a watchmaker, studied mathematics and physics, obtaining his doctor’s degree in 1883 in Zürich. In that year he entered the Bureau of International Weights and Measures, which had just been es tablished. He began as an assistant and worked his way up to the directorship, in 1915, retiring in 1936. In the bureau Guillaume’s tasks in cluded making every effort to increase the precision of the standard measures. Thus he redetermined the volume of the liter. A küogram of pure water is defined Download 17.33 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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