Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd

Sir Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron of Trumpington ( born October 2, 1907 in Glasgow, † January 10, 1997 in Cambridge ) was a British chemist. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for fundamental work on the set of nucleotides and nucleotide coenzymes, the design principle and chemical functioning of the information he gave.

Life

Alexander Todd was born in 1907 in Glasgow, Scotland, and remained here until the completion of his studies at the University of Glasgow. His doctorate was in Germany at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, a second in 1933 in Oxford. In 1936 he became a lecturer at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London and taught there Biochemistry. From 1937 he taught the same subject at the University of London. A year later he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry and Head of chemical laboratories at the University of Manchester. 1944 he was appointed to the University of Cambridge as Professor of Organic Chemistry, where he remained until 1971 and then retired. He died in 1997 at the age of 89 years in Cambridge.

Work

Alexander Todd was one of the pioneers of research into the nucleic acids. It dealt mainly with the elucidation of the structure and the synthesis of nucleotides, describing, among other things in 1949 along with James Baddiley the initial chemical synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). His first important structure elucidation in this area date back to 1942, where he succeeded to decipher details of the structure and the reaction mechanisms. At the beginning of the 1950s he was able to produce some of the nucleotides artificially from which the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA ), which is the carrier of genetic information in all organisms.

In 1955, he explained to the structure of vitamin B12 by combined methods of organic chemistry for the first time with the X-ray structure analysis. It also dealt with the construction of nucleotide coenzymes which act as enzyme the DNA. His most important work was the elucidation of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid ( RNA), with whom he laid the foundations for modern genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology.

Honors and Awards

In addition to the Nobel Prize Alexander Todd was honored in many ways for his scientific work. So he was raised to Baron Todd of Trumpington in 1954 by Queen Elizabeth II knighted in 1962. Since 1966 he was also a member of the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts.

Among the scientific honors include the following:

  • Honorary doctorates at the Universities of Kiel, Glasgow, London, Madrid, Exeter, Leicester, Aligarh, Wales, Yale, Sheffield and Melbourne.
  • Membership of the Royal Society
  • Membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Spanish Council of Scientific Investigation and other international scientific associations, including the Leopoldina in Halle.
  • 1955 Royal Medal of the Royal Society
  • Meldola Medal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Society of Maccabeans
  • Davy Medal and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society
  • Cannizaro Medal of the Italian Chemical Society
  • Lavoisier Medal of the French Chemical Society
  • Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences
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