Abstract
DR. STANLEY PEAT, reader in organic chemistry in the University of Birmingham, has been elected to the chair of chemistry at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, University of Wales, in succession to Prof. E. D. Hughes, who is going to University College, London (Nature, April 3, p. 511). Dr. Peat had a distinguished career as a student of King‘s College, Newcastle, University of Durham, Which he entered with a State Scholarship and the Earl Grey Scholarship in 1921. He graduated with first-class honours in the University of Durham in 1924 and was awarded the Saville Shaw and the Freire-Marreco Medals on graduation. He there joined the research school of Sir Norman HaWorth, and eventually followed him to the University of Birmingham. His first joint publication in 1926 was on a revision of the structural formula of glucose. After obtaining his doctorate he was appointed lecturer in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School of Birmingham under Prof. I. de Burgh Daly, and published several papers in physiological journals on histamine. In 1934 he transferred to the teaching staff of the Department of Chemistry at Birmingham and engaged in constitutional studies of the polysaccharides. Outstanding among his publications are : his proof by synthesis of the configuration of glucosamine, the constitution of maltose, the studies of the mechanism of inversion of configuration in the sugar group, and especially the study of the enzyme systems responsible for the synthesis and degradation of starch. This latter work has led to the isolation of the Q -enzyme which is responsible for the biosynthesis in the presence of phosphorylase of the major component of starch, amylopectin. He has shown, moreover, that the Q-enzyme from potato converts the amylose to amylopectin, and he has devised an elegant method for the separation of the two components of starch. His more recent work has been on the photochemical degradation of carbohydrates, which has opened up what is practically a new field of investigation, the main features of which appear to be an indication of the reversal of the photosynthesis of starch. He has served as the English editor of the international publication "Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry".
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Chemistry at the University College of North Wales, Bangor : Dr. Stanley Peat, F.R.S. Nature 162, 95–96 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162095c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162095c0