Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Dr GT Young OBE, Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, member of the Oxford Chemistry Department (19471982). We are sad to report that Geoffrey Young died at home in Oxford on 24 May 2014, aged 98. Geoffrey was a Fellow of Jesus 1947-1982 (Vice-Principal 1969-1972, Acting Principal 1973-1977); in the University he was Lecturer in Organic Chemistry 1950-1970, and Aldrichian Praelector in Chemistry 1970-1982. He was a pioneer in peptide chemistry Geoffrey was trained at Bristol in carbohydrate chemistry. After wartime work in the transatlantic scientific liaison over explosives, he turned to amino acids and peptides, and made several fundamental contributions, especially to the understanding of racemization in peptide synthesis – still a critical issue in the chemical synthesis of peptides and proteins – and how to plan to avoid or minimize it. In 1958 he was the British representative at the first small meeting of Geoffrey Young with Ewart Jones in the Dyson Perrins Laboratory photograph in 1977 European peptide chemists in Prague, and was a member of an informal committee organising subsequent symposia from which the present international network of Peptide Societies has evolved. He was the prime mover in the creation of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Peptide and Protein Group, and its first Secretary; and he was the first Senior Reporter for the influential Chemical Society’s Specialist Periodical Reports in the area. When he retired from the Department in 1982, he was a leading figure in European peptide science, and in the following decade he gave continued leadership; when the European Peptide Society was formalized he wrote its constitution and was its first Chairman. He was married to Baroness Janet Young, first woman Leader of the House of Lords and the only woman invited into her cabinet by Margaret Thatcher. He was a gentle man: although in the early days critical of RB Merrifield’s pioneering solid phase approach, he subsequently became good friends with Merrifield. Geoffrey was, to his surprise, appointed OBE in 1982; in retrospect this seems a rather modest public acknowledgment of his achievements. His students loved him and he was universally respected among his peers.