[RASMB] Michael Creeth

[Mattia Rocco]

Really sad. To put Mike's work on another perspective, I have quoted some 
of his papers in recent articles, fifty years after they were published.... 
I much regret that he was unable to attend the Uppsala meeting, I was 
looking forward to meet him. In any case, thanks are due to Steve for 
nicely presenting his lecture.

Mattia

At 03:52 PM 1/17/2010 +0000, Steve Harding wrote:
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>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 1st 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 125th 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>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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