亚历山大·罗伯图斯·托德，托德男爵1907—1997

生平

托德从牛津大学毕业后，在李斯特研究所，爱丁堡大学（1934-1936年）和伦敦大学任职。

1938年，托德在加州理工学院担任了六个月的客座教授，最终拒绝了任教职位。

1944年，他被任命为剑桥大学1702 化学系主任，直到1971年退休。1949年，他合成了三磷酸腺苷（ATP）和黄素腺嘌呤二核苷酸（FAD）。托德于1948年秋季担任芝加哥大学的客座教授，并于1950年担任悉尼大学的客座教授。

1955年，他帮助阐明了维生素B12的结构，尽管最终配方和确定的结构是由多萝西·霍奇金和她的团队确定的，后来致力于维生素B1和维生素E（花青素的结构和合成）的研究。

1975年至1980年担任皇家学会会长。

1981年，托德成为世界文化理事会的创始成员。

他因心脏病发作于1997年1月10日在剑桥去世。

家庭

1937年，托德与诺贝尔奖获得者亨利·戴尔爵士的女儿艾莉森·莎拉·戴尔结婚，托德曾担任伦敦皇家学会主席。他们有一个儿子亚历山大·亨利和两个女儿海伦·简和希拉里·艾莉森。

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 in 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 and collaborators at Cambridge 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 Francis Crick and James_Watson's X-ray structural work published in 1953.

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).

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, 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.