Peter D. Mitchell

Peter Dennis Mitchell ( born September 29, 1920 in Mitcham ( Surrey, England); † April 10, 1992 in Bodmin (Cornwall, England) ) was a British chemist who in 1978 received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on energy conversion in cells.

He studied at Cambridge University, where he received his doctorate in 1950. From 1955 to 1963 he was Director of the Department of Chemistry and Biology at the Zoological Institute of the University of Edinburgh. In 1954, he was research director of the Glynn Research Laboratories.

He studied the mitochondria, the "power plants" of the living cell. He formulated the Chemiosmotic theory that has long been controversial as " Mitchell hypothesis" and was partially violently opposed. Meanwhile, Mitchell's discovery of the chemiosmotic coupling an important cornerstone of modern biological sciences. She explains how in the cell, the transport of protons across a biomembrane for the conversion of adenosine diphosphate ( ADP ) for energy adenosine triphosphate ( ATP) is utilized. He coined the term proticity to emphasize the analogy between proton flux and electric current.

For the discovery of the chemiosmotic coupling, he received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 1981 Mitchell the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.