Misplaced Pages

Professor Alfred Alan Eddy (4 November 1926 – 24 October 2017), usually known as Alan Eddy, was a biochemist who was Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) between 1959 and 1994.

Early life and education

Eddy was born on 4 November 1926 in St Just, Cornwall, the son of Alfred and Ellen Eddy. After completing his secondary education at Devonport High School for Boys, he attended Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a 1st Class Honours degree in 1949. He was awarded his DPhil in 1951, supervised by Cyril Hinshelwood.

Career

In 1953, Eddy joined the Brewing Industry Research Foundation in Nutfield. Using snail gastric extracts Eddy, in 1957, was able to prepare protoplasts/sphaeroplasts of the yeast S. pastorianus; the ability to produce cell wall-free yeasts was important in facilitating much of later yeast research. In 1959, he was appointed to the first chair of Biochemistry at UMIST; he oversaw the creation of the Department of Biochemistry from the previously existing Brewing Chemistry department. He held this position until his retirement in 1994. He was Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester until his death in 2017.

Eddy's research interests were diverse, but his major contributions were in the biology of trans-membrane transport, in particular the functioning of proton pumps and symport systems.

Personal life

Eddy lived in Disley, Cheshire with his wife Susan Ruth (née Slade-Jones), whom he married in 1954. They had two sons.

He died on 24 October 2017 at the age of 90.

References

1. ^ 'EDDY, Prof. Alfred Alan', Who's Who 2011, A & C Black, 2011; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2010 (accessed 27 September 2011).
2. Eddy, Alan (1951). The Physical chemistry of bacterial growth: the role of alkali metal ions in bacterial metabolism (Thesis). Thesis DPhil--University of Oxford.
3. Eddy, Dan (29 November 2017). "Alan Eddy obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
4. Eddy, A.A., Williamson, D.H. (1957), A method of isolating protoplasts from yeast, Nature 179: 1252–1253.
5. Wilson, pp. 16, 26
6. "Personal Webpages". The University of Manchester. Retrieved 27 September 2011.
7. Eddy AA, Hopkins P, Shaw R Proton and charge circulation through substrate symports in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: non-classical behaviour of the cytosine symport. Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology (PMID 7597638)
8. "Alan Eddy obituary". The Guardian. 29 November 2017. Archived from the original on 4 June 2023.

Bibliography

• Wilson, D. (2008) Reconfiguring Biological Sciences in the Late Twentieth Century: a Study of the University of Manchester. Manchester University

• British biochemists
• 1926 births
• 2017 deaths
• People from St Just in Penwith
• People educated at Devonport High School for Boys
• Academics of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
• Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford