Walter Gratzer

Walter Gratzer
Born
Walter Bruno Gratzer

(1932-09-20)20 September 1932
Breslau
Died20 October 2021(2021-10-20) (aged 89)
London
EducationUniversity of Oxford (MA, 1958)
National Institute for Medical Research (PhD, 1960)
OccupationBiophysical chemist

Walter Bruno Gratzer (20 September 1932 – 20 October 2021) was a German-born British biophysical chemist and science writer.

Career

Gratzer was born in a Jewish hospital in Breslau (now Wrocław). Gratzer and his parents escaped Nazi persecution by escaping to Czechoslovakia and the United Kingdom in 1939. He lived in Belsize Park and then Cheltenham. He won a scholarship to Cheltenham grammar school.

Gratzer completed at University of Oxford a BA in chemistry in 1954, followed by an MA in 1958. His PhD was completed at National Institute for Medical Research in 1960. 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.

He was professor of biophysical chemistry at King's College London and an author and reviewer of popular science. He was the first Nature news correspondent appointed by editor John Maddox. Oliver Sacks of Nature writes that his reviews have high literary quality and show knowledge of a wide range of topics. Gratzer was a friend of James D. Watson, and wrote the introduction and afterword of his A Passion for DNA. He died in London on 20 October 2021.

Publications

Books

  • The Longman Literary Companion to Science (1989) (editor)
  • A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science 1869–1953 (1996)
  • The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty (2000) (Google Books)
  • Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes (2002) [2004] (Google Books)
  • Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (2005) [2007] (Google Books)
  • Giant Molecules: From Nylon to Nanotubes (2009) (Google Books)

Reviews

  • "Review of A Short History of Cardiology by Peter Fleming". London Review of Books. 19 (13): 24. 1997.
  • Gratzer, Walter (1998). "Per ardua ad Stockholm". Nature. 393 (6686): 640–641. doi:10.1038/31388..
  • Morrison, Douglas R. O. (2000). "Now you see it, now you don't". Nature. 408 (6808): 24–25. doi:10.1038/35040637..
  • Gratzer, Walter (2003). "A stranger in a strange land". Nature. 424 (6950): 725. doi:10.1038/424725a..

Articles

Academic papers

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Ferry, Georgina (10 November 2021). "Walter Gratzer obituary". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023.
  2. ↑ Hargittai, Istvan (2022). "Walter B. Gratzer (1932–2021) – molecular scientist and science writer". Structural Chemistry. 33 (3): 991–992. Bibcode:2022StrCh..33..991H. doi:10.1007/s11224-022-01942-y.
  3. ↑ Robertson, Miranda (2022). "Walter Bruno Gratzer (1932–2021): In his own words, as far as possible". Current Biology. 32 (9): 402–R404. Bibcode:2022CBio...32.R402R. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.002.
  4. ↑ "Professor Walter Gratzer", King's College London, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
  5. ↑ 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.
  6. ↑ Gratzer, W. (2009). "Obituary: John Maddox (1925–2009)". Nature. 458 (7241): 983–984. doi:10.1038/458983a. PMID 19396135..
  7. 1 2 Sacks, Oliver (2002). "Bringing scientists to life". Nature. 419 (6909): 786. doi:10.1038/419786a.
  8. ↑ Friedberg, Errol C. (2005). The Writing Life of James D. Watson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, p. 111. ISBN 0-87969-700-8.
  9. ↑ 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)
  10. ↑ "Squashing bishops and fighting newts", The Economist, issue 7634, p. 121, 23 December 1989.
  11. ↑ Mbanya, Jean Claude (1996). "A Bedside Nature: Genius and Eccentricity in Science 1869–1953". BMJ. 312 (7039): 1169. doi:10.1136/bmj.312.7039.1169.
  12. ↑ "Who did what", New Scientist, issue, 2018, 24 February 1996, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required)
  13. ↑ Bauer, Henry H. "The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty" (PDF). Journal of Scientific Exploration. 15 (2): 291–293. Archived from the original on 6 July 2010. Retrieved 7 November 2010.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  14. ↑ McSweegan, Edward. '"The Undergrowth of Science" by Walter Gratzer', Salon, 30 November 2000, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
  15. ↑ Stasiak, Andrzej (2001). "Pathological science". EMBO Reports. 2 (9): 762. doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve196. PMC 1084050.
  16. ↑ 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.
  17. ↑ "Eurekas and Euphorias", concatenation.org, accessed 7 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 7 November 2010.
  18. ↑ Matthews, Robert. "Telling tales", New Scientist, issue 2360, 14 September 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. (subscription required)
  19. ↑ Ince, Martin. "Wars, women and discovery", Times Higher Education, 11 October 2002, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
  20. ↑ Carpenter, Kenneth J (2006). "Terrors of the Table: the Curious History of Nutrition". American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 83 (3): 725. doi:10.1093/ajcn.83.3.725.
  21. ↑ 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.
  22. ↑ Kornberg, Hans (2006). "Terrors of the table: the curious history of nutrition by Walter Gratzer". The FASEB Journal. 21 (1): 5–7. doi:10.1096/fj.07-0102ufm.
  23. ↑ 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.
  24. ↑ Stern, Jane; Stern, Michael. "Something We Ate?", The New York Times, 4 December 2005, accessed 10 November 2010. Archived[link removed] by WebCite on 10 November 2010.
  25. ↑ Menger, Frederic (2010). "Giant Molecules". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 49 (12): 4859. doi:10.1002/anie.201003186.
  26. ↑ Smidt, Scott (2010). "Giant Molecules: From Nylon to Nanotubes". Journal of Chemical Education. 87 (9): 911. doi:10.1021/ed100624d. Archived from the original on 7 May 2024.
  27. ↑ Jones, Richard (2010). "A macromolecular history". Nature. 464 (7287): 354. doi:10.1038/464354a.

Further reading