[RASMB] Michael Creeth

Tom Laue Tom.Laue at unh.edu
Sun Jan 17 14:34:16 PST 2010


Dear all-
I can only echo Steve's sadness on the passing of Michael Creeth. My 
recollection of him is that he was always patient, kind and welcoming to 
AUC newcomers. His research was top-notch, and his heritage in the form 
of his graduate students, post docs and visiting scientists is astonishing.
Tom Laue

Steve Harding wrote:
>
> Dear All
>
>  
>
> It is with great sadness I have to report the death on Friday of one 
> of the great pioneers of the analytical ultracentrifuge, Dr. Michael 
> Creeth. 
>
>  
>
> Mike (born 1924) was a graduate of Nottingham and did his PhD with D. 
> "Doj" Jordan on one of the earliest Model E's.  He then moved to the 
> vibrant Wisconsin in the early 50's to do a postdoc with Lou Gosting 
> and then took up a post at Adelaide -- his 1^st PhD students were Don 
> Winzor and Laurie Nichol. In 1960 he moved back to England at the 
> Lister Institute - which was still running a Svedberg oil turbine 
> centrifuge - and then in 1978 to Bristol before he retired in 1984.  
> It was there I had the pleasure of working with him as a postDoc on 
> what had become since the Lister his main field of interest, mucus 
> glycoproteins, where his work is still widely known.
>
>  
>
> Mike was a true gentlemen and absolutely meticulous towards his 
> science: a highly respected and distinguished practitioner.  Besides 
> his seminal work on diffusion in the 50's and 60's emanating from his 
> time with Gosting and his work on analytical isopycnic density 
> gradient sedimentation in the 70's and 80's his most notable 
> contribution to science was probably in his early days at Nottingham 
> -- with Jordan and Gullander he discovered the hydrogen bonding 
> between the base pairs of DNA (2 papers published in 1949 in J. Chem. 
> Soc., pages 1406-1409 and 1409-1413), 2 years before the Chargraff 
> rules of base pairing was published. The existence of the H-bonds was 
> crucial of course to the 1953 discovery of Watson and Crick.
>
>  
>
> Last September he was invited to talk at the Svedberg 125^th birthday 
> meeting at Uppsala -- I was going to go with him but he couldn't go in 
> the end due to failing health. He gave me the great honour of 
> presenting his talk -- if anyone wants to see a copy of this lecture 
> it's on:
>
> http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ncmh/lecture_notes/Svedberg_125th_anniversary_JMCreeth_talk_Sep09.pdf
>
>  
>
> Thankfully he was able to complete his article for the special 
> Svedberg commemorative edition of Macromolecular Bioscience.
>
>  
>
> So goodbye Mike, we will miss you -- and we forgive you for making us 
> wear those silk gloves before handling Model E rotors!
>
>  
>
> Steve Harding
>
>  
>
>
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>
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>
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-- 
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