Alec Todd

Template:Short description Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Main other Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd (2 October 1907 – 10 January 1997) was a British biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1957.

Early life and education

Todd was born at Cathcart in outer Glasgow, the elder son of Alexander Todd, JP, a clerk with the Glasgow Subway, and his wife, Jane Lowry.

He attended Allan Glen's School and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a bachelor's degree (BSc) in 1928. He received a doctorate (Dr Phil.nat.) from Goethe University Frankfurt in 1931 for his thesis on the chemistry of the bile acids.

Todd was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and, after studying at Oriel College, Oxford, he received another doctorate (DPhil) in 1933.

Career

Todd held posts with the Lister Institute, the University of Edinburgh (staff, 1934–1936) and the University of London, where he was appointed Reader in biochemistry.

In 1938, Alexander Todd spent six months as a visiting professor at California Institute of Technology, eventually declining an offer of faculty position.

Todd became the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry and director of the Chemical Laboratories of the University of Manchester in 1938, where he began working on nucleosides, compounds that form the structural units of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). At 31, he was the youngest professor of chemistry since Frankland. He was elected to membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 29.11.1938

In 1944, he was appointed to the 1702 Chair of Chemistry in the University of Cambridge, which he held until his retirement in 1971. In 1949, he synthesised adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD). Todd served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in Autumn 1948 and University of Sydney in 1950.

By 1951 Todd an collaborators had determined by biochemical methods how the backbone of DNA is structured via the successive linking of carbon atoms 3 and 5 of the sugar to phosphates. This helped corroborate Watson and Crick's X-ray structural work published in 1953.Template:Rp

In 1955, he helped elucidate the structure of vitamin B₁₂, although the final formula and definite structure was determined by Dorothy Hodgkin and her team, and later worked on the structure and synthesis of vitamin B₁ and vitamin E, the anthocyanins (the pigments of flowers and fruits) from insects (aphids, beetles) and studied alkaloids found in cannabis. He served as chairman of the Government of the United Kingdom's advisory committee on scientific policy from 1952 to 1964.

He is credited as the first person to synthesize H4-CBD and H2-CBD from Cannabidiol by hydrogenation as early as 1940.

He received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his work on nucleotides and nucleotide co-enzymes.”

Elected a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge in 1944, he served as Master from 1963 to 1978. Lord Todd became the first Chancellor of the new University of Strathclyde in 1965, and a visiting professor at Hatfield Polytechnic (1978–1986). Among his many honours, including over 40 honorary degrees, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1942, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1955, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1957, and the American Philosophical Society in 1965. President of the Royal Society from 1975 to 1980, The Queen awarded him the Order of Merit in 1977.

In 1981, Todd became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

Personal life and death

In 1937, Todd married Alison Sarah Dale (d. 1987), daughter of Nobel Prize winner Henry Hallett Dale, who like Todd, served as President of the Royal Society of London. They had a son and two daughters:

• Dr the Hon Alexander Henry Todd (b. 1939), educated at Oriel College, Oxford, Master Salters' Company (1999/2000), m. 1stly 1967 (div 1981) Joan Margaret Koester, m. 2ndly Patricia Mary Harvey Jones, daughter of Brigadier Alan Harvey Jones Template:Post-nominals, of Somerford Booths, Cheshire;
• The Hon Helen Jean Todd (b. 1941), m. 1963 Philip Edgar Brown, and has two sons and a daughter;
• The Hon Hilary Alison Todd (b. 1946).

Todd died in Cambridge on 10 January 1997 at the age of 89 following a heart attack.

Honours

Todd was honoured as a Nieuwland Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame in 1948, an Arthur D. Little Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1954, and a Hitchcock Lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, in 1957.

Knighted as Sir Alexander Todd in 1954 he was elevated as a Life Peer on 16 April 1962, being created Baron Todd of Trumpington in the County of Cambridge.

Lord Todd, Master of the Worshipful Company of Salters (1961/62) and then Master of Christ's College (1963–78), is commemorated by a blue plaque erected by the Royal Society of Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry in the University of Cambridge.

See also

• Atherton–Todd reaction
• History of RNA biology
• List of RNA biologists
• Presidents of the Royal Society

Further reading

• : "The Era of Todd, Plumb and Snow", by Sir David Cannadine.

External links

• Obituary in The Independent
• Obituary in The New York Times
• Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1957 Synthesis in the Study of Nucleotides
• Template:NPG name
• . Video of an interviewed with Lewis Wolpert. Duration 37 minutes.
• Papers of Lord Todd held at the Churchill Archives Centre

Template:S-acaTemplate:S-breakTemplate:S-breakTemplate:S-npoTemplate:S-breakTemplate:S-civTemplate:S-endTemplate:Nobel Prize in Chemistry Laureates 1951-1975Template:1957 Nobel Prize winnersTemplate:Royal Society presidents 1900sTemplate:Copley Medallists 1951–2000Template:1702 Chairs of Chemistry (University of Cambridge)Template:Founding members of the World Cultural CouncilTemplate:Authority control