Gilbert Smithson Adair

Gilbert Smithson Adair FRS[1] (1896–1979) was an early protein scientist who used osmotic pressure measurements to establish that haemoglobin was a tetramer under physiological conditions. This conclusion led him to be the first to identify cooperative binding, in the context of oxygen binding to haemoglobin.

Gilbert Smithson Adair
Born(1896-09-21)21 September 1896
Whitehaven
Died22 June 1979(1979-06-22) (aged 82)
Cambridge
Resting placeCambridge Crematorium
NationalityBritish
Alma materKing's College, Cambridge
Known forShowing that hemoglobin is a tetramer
Spouse(s)Muriel Elaine Robinson
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society[1]
Scientific career
FieldsProteins

Personal life

Gilbert Smithson Adair was born on 21 September 1896 in Whitehaven, son of Harold and Anna Mary Adair (née Jackson), who were Quakers. Gilbert and his sister Anna were initially taught at home by a governess. Later, Gilbert was taught at the Quaker Bootham School, where he was a boarder. The family, meanwhile had moved to Egremont, where Harold Adair was managing director of Wyndham Mining Company Ltd. an iron ore mine.[2] Adair entered King's College, Cambridge from 1915 to 1917, gaining a first in Natural Sciences. He was soon employed by the Food Investigation Board, a wartime research group set up by the DSIR to determine how to prevent wastage of food, particularly fish, meat, fruits, etc. on cargo ships.[3][4]

In 1920, he became a research student at King's College, and was made an official Fellow in 1928, granting him five years to devote to research. In 1931, he became assistant director of the Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge. He was a Reader in Biophysics from 1945 until his retirement in 1963. Adair was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1939.

As an incidental historical note, Adair provided the purified haemoglobin that Max Perutz used for the first structure determination of any protein (by X-ray crystallography).

He married Muriel Elaine Robinson in Cambridge in 1931. Muriel had entered Girton College in 1918, and went on to obtain a research fellowship at Newnham. She died on 2 January 1975.[4]

Gilbert Smithson Adair died on 22 June 1979. He was cremated in Cambridge six days later.

References
  1. Johnson, P.; Perutz, M. F. (1981). "Gilbert Smithson Adair. 21 September 1896 – 22 June 1979". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 27: 1. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1981.0001. JSTOR 769863.
  2. "Another Egremothian's Sad End", The Whitehaven News, 17 December 1914, retrieved 2 May 2020
  3. Kidd, FRS, F (15 February 1951). "Food Research under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 138 (890): 31–47.
  4. "ODNB Adair, Gilbert Smithson". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/ODNB30745. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Further reading
  • Edsall, J. T. (1992). "Memories of early days in protein science, 1926-1940". Protein Science. 1 (11): 1526–1530. doi:10.1002/pro.5560011114. PMC 2142119. PMID 1303771.
  • Simoni RD, Hill RL, Vaughan M. (2002) "The Structure and Function of Haemoglobin: Gilbert Smithson Adair and the Adair Equations", J. Biol. Chem., 277, e20.
  • Adair, G. S. (1925). "A Critical Study of the Direct Method of Measuring the Osmotic Pressure of Haemoglobin". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 98 (692): 523. doi:10.1098/rspb.1925.0054.
  • Adair GS. (1925) "The Hemoglobin System. VI. The Oxygen Dissociation Curve of Hemoglobin", J. Biol. Chem., 63, 529-545.
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