Abstract
ADRIAN BROWN, the first professor of the first established university school of brewing in this country, died nearly two years ago, and no one more suitable than Prof. Armstrong could have been chosen to pay a tribute to his memory.1 Prof. Armstrong's enthusiasm for the application of chemistry to biology is undimmed by age; his memories and friendships reach back further than most men's, and (may it be added in a scientific journal?) he has a fine appreciation of the glories of beer. He feels he has observed what would have been Adrian Brown's wish, in making his eulogy be “less of the man than of the yeast-cell,” more of the school than of the teacher. After some biographical details and personal reminiscences going back to the 'sixties, he discusses Adrian Brown's scientific work, placing that on the barleycorn first. There is a variety with a blue layer of cells underlying the thin outer skin of the corn; the blue colouring matter behaves like litmus, and is turned red bv acids; yet when the grains are soaked in dilute acid they remain blue, for only water enters. This discovery enabled Adrian Brown to study a semi-permeable membrane in a living object and to examine the behaviour of a large number of substances towards it. Water is absorbed from a saturated salt solution, but the more dilute the solution the more rapidly is water taken up. Sugar, strong acids, and strong alkalis also give up the water in which they are dissolved without entering themselves. On the other hand, weak acids, also weak bases, such as ammonia, and chemically neutral substances, like alcohol and chloroform, readily pass through the membrane. Prof. Armstrong suggests that only the simple “hvdrone” molecules of water, which alone are considered bv him to have the formula H3O1 penetrate the membrane; complexes like H4O2 and H6O4 are held back. Cane-sugar is held back by the membrane of the barlevcorn, yet it passes through the walls of the yeast-cell!
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Scientific and other Aspects of Beer. Nature 107, 698–699 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107698a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107698a0