Malcolm Dixon

Malcolm Dixon
Malcolm Dixon
	Malcolm Dixon (1899 - 1985)
Born	18 April 1899; Cambridge, UK
Died	7 December 1985 (aged 86); Cambridge, UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (PhD)
Awards	FRS (1942)[1]
	Scientific career
Fields	Biochemistry
Institutions	University of Cambridge
Thesis	The types of oxidation-reduction system, enzymic and non-enzymic, present in living animal tissues (1925)
Doctoral advisor	Frederick Hopkins
Doctoral students	Brigitte Askonas; David E. Green; Brian S. Hartley[2]; Gregorio Weber;

Malcolm Dixon (18 April 1899 – 7 December 1985) was a British biochemist.

Education and early life

Dixon was born in Cambridge, UK to Allick Page Dixon and Caroline Dewe Dixon (née Mathews).[1] He received his PhD in 1925, for research supervised by Frederick Gowland Hopkins at the University of Cambridge.[3]

Research and career

Dixon's research investigated the purification of enzymes and the enzyme kinetics of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. He studied the oxidation of glutathione and other thiols by molecular oxygen and measured the redox potential of the thiol-disulfide system, also establishing that the oxidation of glutathione was catalyzed by trace metals. He investigated xanthine oxidase, and thereby elucidated many aspects of the chemistry of dehydrogenases. He showed that the hydrogen peroxide formed in the reaction of xanthine oxidase with molecular oxygen inactivated the enzyme and that the inhibition could be relieved by the addition of catalase, thus helping to establish a biochemical role for the latter enzyme. Dixon published a series of papers on D-amino acid oxidase, detailing the kinetics and thermodynamics of association of the coenzyme with the apoprotein, the substrate and inhibitor specificity, and the effect of pH on the kinetic constants.

Dixon was an expert on the theory and use of manometers. In 1931, he collaborated with David Keilin and Robin Hill to determine the first absorption spectrum of a cytochrome, cytochrome c. Dixon studied the chemistry of lachrymators and mustard gas and proposed a phosphokinase theory to explain their mode of action.

Awards and honours

Dixon was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1942[1] and became a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge in 1950. He died in Cambridge in 1985.

gollark: Well, I patched *that*, and that makes sense since it actually deals with environments.

gollark: But *why* would it meddle with the environment and apparently *only* for getfenv?

gollark: No.

gollark: This may require testing. It's not impossible that *somehow* `pcall` is using the "real" environment, but I have no idea what would cause htat.

gollark: ```lua -- if function is not from within the VM, return env from within sandbox function environment.getfenv(arg) local env if type(arg) == "number" then env = gf(arg + 1) else gf(arg) end if not env or env._HOST and string.find(env._HOST, "YAFSS") == nil then return gf() else return env end end```

References

Perham, R. N. (1988). "Malcolm Dixon. 18 April 1899-7 December 1985". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 34 (0): 98–131. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1988.0005. ISSN 0080-4606.
"Chemistry Tree - Brian S. Hartley Family Tree". academictree.org. Archived from the original on 2015-12-30.
Dixon, Malcolm (1925). The types of oxidation-reduction system, enzymic and non-enzymic, present in living animal tissues (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.

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[frs-1] Perham, R. N. (1988). "Malcolm Dixon. 18 April 1899-7 December 1985". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 34 (0): 98–131. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1988.0005. ISSN 0080-4606.

[tree-2] "Chemistry Tree - Brian S. Hartley Family Tree". academictree.org. Archived from the original on 2015-12-30.

[3] Dixon, Malcolm (1925). The types of oxidation-reduction system, enzymic and non-enzymic, present in living animal tissues (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.