Abstract
DR. BRITTON CHANCE has been appointed director of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation of Medical Physics in the University of Pennsylvania in succession to Dr. Detlev W. Bronk. Dr. Chance, who was previously associate professor of biophysics in the University of Pennsylvania, graduated from that University in 1935 and became interested in the kinetics of enzyme action. In 1938 he started work at Cambridge on an electronic device of his own invention for steering ships, and later undertook research in the United States on electronic circuits in radar. At the end of the War, Dr. Chance was able to return to his enzyme studies in the laboratories of Prof. H. Theorell in Stockholm and Prof. D. Keilin in Cambridge. His work on the enzymes peroxidase and catalase constitutes an entirely new approach to the study of the very short-lived intermediate compounds which these enzymes form with peroxides. The formation of such compounds is characterized by changes in absorption spectra ; but the reactions are too rapid to be recorded at concentrations sufficiently high for normal methods of spectroscopic observation. Dr. Chance's extensive knowledge and experience of radio technique enabled him to develop the Roughton and Millikan method for the study of rapid reactions to a stage where optical density changes of the order of 0·001 could, through high amplification of a photocell current, be instantaneously and accurately recorded. At the high dilutions which can in consequence be employed, the enzyme-substrate reactions proceed at rates which permit detailed analyses. The value and scope of this experimental technique in the field of reaction kinetics can scarcely be overestimated.
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Medical Physics at the University of Pennsylvania : Dr. Britton Chance. Nature 163, 558–559 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163558d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163558d0