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Walter Bruno Gratzer (20 September 1932 – 20 October 2021) was a German-born British biophysical chemist.[1]
He was professor of biophysical chemistry at King's College London[2] and an author and reviewer of popular science. He was the first Nature news correspondent appointed by editor John Maddox.[3] Oliver Sacks of Nature writes that his reviews have high literary quality and show knowledge of a wide range of topics.[4] He was a friend of James D. Watson, and wrote the introduction and afterword of his A Passion for DNA.[5]
Gratzer received his BA in chemistry in 1954 and his MA in 1958 from the University of Oxford, and his PhD in 1960 from the National Institute for Medical Research. He was a research fellow at Harvard University from 1960 to 1963, a lecturer in biophysics at King's from 1963 to 1966, and worked at the Medical Research Council from 1966 to 1996.[6] He died in London on 20 October 2021.[7]
Publications
Books
- The Longman Literary Companion to Science (1989) (editor)[8][9]
- A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science 1869–1953 (1996)[10][11]
- The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty (2000) (Google Books)[12][13][14][15]
- Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes (2002) [2004] (Google Books)[4][16][17][18]
- Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (2005) [2007] (Google Books)[19][20][21][22][23]
- Giant Molecules: From Nylon to Nanotubes (2009) (Google Books)[24][25][26]
Reviews
- Review of A Short History of Cardiology by Peter Fleming, London Review of Books 19 (13): 24, 3 July 1997, accessed 7 November 2010. (subscription required)
- "Per ardua ad: Stockholm", Nature 393: 640641, 18 June 1998, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required) doi:10.1038/31388.
- "Now you see it, now you don't", Nature 408: 24–25, 2 November 2000, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required) doi:10.1038/35040637.
- "A stranger in a strange land", Nature 424: 725, 14 August 2003, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required) doi:10.1038/424725a.
Articles
- Gratzer, Walter (5 March 2002). "Max Perutz (1914–2002)". Current Biology. 12 (5): R152–R154. doi:10.1016/S0960-9822(02)00727-3. S2CID 30263181.
- Gratzer, Walter. "Obituary: Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004)", Nature 431: 922, 21 October 2004, accessed 7 November 2010. doi:10.1038/431922a
- Gratzer, Walter. "Nature — The Maddox Years", Nature, accessed 7 November 2010. doi:10.1038/nature06241.
- Gratzer, Walter. "Embryologist in Eden, a review of The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester (2008), Harper Collins, New York ", The FASEB Journal 22 (10): 3415–3416, 1 October 2008, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010. doi:10.1096/fj.08-1002ufm.
- Gratzer, Walter. "Retrospective: Charles Tanford (1921–2009)" (PDF). (131 KB), ASBMB Today, December 2009, pp. 15–17, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010. See HTML version here. Archived on 7 November 2010.
Academic papers
- Pinder, JC et al. "Actomyosin motor in the merozoite of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum: implications for red cell invasion", Journal of Cell Science 111 (13): 1831–1839, 1998, accessed 10 November 2010.
References
- ^ Ferry, Georgina (10 November 2021). "Walter Gratzer obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- ^ Gratzer, W. (2011). "Biophysics - whence, whither, wherefore - or Hold that hyphen". BMC Biology. 9: 12. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-9-12. PMC 3055213. PMID 21371341.
- ^ Gratzer, W. (2009). "Obituary: John Maddox (1925–2009)". Nature. 458 (7241): 983–984. doi:10.1038/458983a. PMID 19396135..
- ^ a b Sacks, Oliver. "Bringing scientists to life", Nature 419: 786, 24 October 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required) doi:10.1038/419786a.
- ^ Friedberg, Errol C. (2005). The Writing Life of James D. Watson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, p. 111. ISBN 0-87969-700-8.
- ^ "Professor Walter Gratzer", King's College London, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
- ^ "Walter Gratzer obituary". The Guardian. 10 November 2021. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023.
- ^ Herbert, Roy. "To encourage insomnia", New Scientist 1690, 11 November 1989, p. 62, accessed 7 November 2010. See the copy at the New Scientist website. (subscription required)
- ^ "Squashing bishops and fighting newts", The Economist, issue 7634, p. 121, 23 December 1989.
- ^ Mbanya, Jean Claude. "A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science 1869–1953", BMJ 312 (7039): 1169, 4 May 1996, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required)
- ^ "Who did what", New Scientist, issue, 2018, 24 February 1996, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required)
- ^ Bauer, Henry H. "The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty" (PDF). (69.3 KB) Journal of Scientific Exploration 15 (2): 291–293, 2001, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010. Reviews webpage, archived 7 November 2010.
- ^ McSweegan, Edward. '"The Undergrowth of Science" by Walter Gratzer', Salon, 30 November 2000, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
- ^ Stasiak, Andrzej. "Pathological science", EMBO Reports 2 (9): 762, 15 September 2001, accessed 7 November 2010. doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve196. PMC 1084050.
- ^ Tunstad, Erik. "Vitenskap på ville veier" (in Norwegian) (Google Translate), Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, 19 December 2000, updated, 10 June 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
- ^ "Eurekas and Euphorias", concatenation.org, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
- ^ Matthews, Robert. "Telling tales", New Scientist, issue 2360, 14 September 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required)
- ^ Ince, Martin. "Wars, women and discovery", Times Higher Education, 11 October 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
- ^ Carpenter, Kenneth J. "Terrors of the Table: the Curious History of Nutrition", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 83 (3): 725, March 2006, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
- ^ Hirst, Christopher. "Terrors of the Table, by Walter Gratzer", The Independent, 9 February 2007, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
- ^ Kornberg, Hans. "Terrors of the table: the curious history of nutrition by Walter Gratzer", The FASEB Journal 21 (1): 5–7, 1 January 2007. doi:10.1096/fj.07-0102ufm. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
- ^ Youngman, Angela. "Book Review: Terrors of the Table by Walter Gratzer", Monsters and Critics, 20 February 2007, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
- ^ Stern, Jane; Stern, Michael. "Something We Ate?", The New York Times, 4 December 2005, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
- ^ Menger, Frederic, M. "Giant Molecules", Angewandte Chemie International Edition 49 (12): 4859, accessed 7 November 2010. Hosted by Wiley; first published online on 11 June 2010. doi:10.1002/anie.201003186. (subscription required)
- ^ Smidt, Scott. "Book Review of Giant Molecules: From Nylon to Nanotubes", Journal of Chemical Education 87 (9): 910, accessed 7 November 2010. Published online on 16 July 2010. doi:10.1021/ed100624d. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010. For the PDF, see Smidt, Scott (2010). "Giant Molecules: From Nylon to Nanotubes". Journal of Chemical Education. 87 (9): 911. doi:10.1021/ed100624d. (549 KB), archived on 7 November 2010.
- ^ Jones, Richard. "A macromolecular history", Nature 464: 354, 18 March 2010, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required) doi:10.1038/464354a.
Further reading
- Ince, Martin. "No moos is good news", Times Higher Education, 1 March 1996, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
- Mercer, Nick. "Serious Talk: Science and religion in dialogue", Third Way 19 (4): 27, May 1996.
- Barrow, John D. (1999) [2000]. Between Inner Space and Outer Space: Essays on Science, Art, and Philosophy, Oxford University Press, pp. 11–13. ISBN 0-19-288041-1.
- Perspective: Walter Gratzer, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10 December 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
- Semenza, G.; Turner, A. J. (eds.) (2003). A History of Biochemistry: Selected Topics in the History of Biochemistry (volume 42), Elsevier. ISBN 0-444-50924-0.
- Skern, Tim (2009). Writing Scientific English: A Workbook, UTB (publisher), p. 174. ISBN 978-3-8252-3112-5.
- "Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes", Oxford University Press, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
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