Abstract
SIR FREDERICK GOWLAND HOPKINS delivered the Bacot Memorial Lecture entitled “The Naturalist in the Laboratory“before the London Natural History Society on April 2. Sir Frederick pointed out that early biology was limited to study of the physiology and morphology of plants and animals (chiefly vertebrates), the causes which affected them being largely conjectural; the chemist provided means of elucidating these problems. Observation of the bombardier beetle and its explosive excretion first attracted Sir Frederick's notice to these matters fifty -seven years ago, and despite this first experiment proving fruitless, it was this which led to his taking up biochemistry. The work of the biochemist in comparing the action of catalysis with enzymes has established the processes at work which enable both plant and animal to digest and transform food materials into substances suitable for oxidation to enable life to continue. But it does not stop there, for it has shown the relationship between species by the parallel processes carried on in similar species, and that each species may have its own process. A further stage has been to show the necessity for certain substances to allow the full utilisation of food supplies. Known as vitamins, they provide the means for the body to obtain enough fuel to supply full growth and reduce vulnerability to disease. Although systematic, taxonomic, morphological and physiological research must continue, and the biochemist can still open new avenues for exploration, there is every scope for wide co-operation between all branches of natural history from an ecological point of view. Finally, although exact chemical reactions in plant and animal can be ascertained and reproduced experimentally, and although living tissues can be made to function under artificial conditions, the origin and nature of life is a matter which scientific research has yet to explain.
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The Naturalist in the Laboratory. Nature 135, 576 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135576a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135576a0