Adrian John Brown

Adrian John Brown, FRS (27 April 1852 – 2 July 1919[1]) was a British Professor of Malting and Brewing at the University of Birmingham and a pioneer in the study of enzyme kinetics.[2]

Mason University College, now the University of Birmingham

He was born at Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire to Edwin Brown, a bank manager in the town. His elder brother was Horace Tabberer Brown. He attended the local grammar school and then went up to study chemistry at the Royal College of Science in London. He became private assistant to Dr Russell at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. In 1873 he returned to Burton to work as a chemist in the brewing industry for the next twenty-five years. In 1899[3] he left to become Professor of Brewing and Malting at Mason University College (which became Birmingham University in 1900).[4]

He studied the rate of fermentation of sucrose by yeast and suggested in 1892 that a substance in the yeast might be responsible for speeding up the reaction.[5] This was the first time enzymes were suggested as separate entities from organisms and talked about in chemical terms. He later studied the enzyme responsible and made the striking suggestion that the kinetics he observed were the result of an enzyme-substrate complex being formed during the reaction,[6] a concept that has formed the basis of all later work on enzyme kinetics.[7] Similar ideas had been put earlier by German chemist and Nobel laureate Hermann Emil Fischer by comparing substrate and enzyme with a key and a lock.

References
  1. See Royal Society Record here
  2. Srinivasan, Bharath (27 September 2020). "Words of advice: teaching enzyme kinetics". The FEBS Journal. doi:10.1111/febs.15537. ISSN 1742-464X. PMID 32981225.
  3. "Chairs and Professors of Universities in the United Kingdom". Who's Who Year-book for 1908. 1908. p. 132.
  4. http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayArticleForFree.cfm?doi=CT9222102898&JournalCode=CT
  5. New Beer in an Old Bottle: Eduard Buchner and the Growth of Biochemical Knowledge, edited by Athel Cornish-Bowden and published by Universitat de València (1997) ISBN 84-370-3328-4, A history of early enzymology.
  6. A.J. Brown A J: Enzyme action, J. Chem. Soc. 81 (1902) 373–388
  7. Harden A (1 February 1920). "Obituary Notice: Adrian John Brown". Biochem. J. 14 (1): 1–3. doi:10.1042/bj0140001. PMC 1258887. PMID 16742879.


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