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German-born British biophysical chemist (1932–2021)
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
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
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.
External links
International National Academics People Other