Gregorio Weber, a friend and mentor at Sheffield in the early 50's
by Ron Whittam
The 1950s was a marvellous period for biochemistry at Sheffield University with Gregorio being one of the key scientists in the department. I was a junior member of the MRC Group, and since 1951 working for my PhD. In 1952 Stephenson Hall of residence had recently been opened at Oakholme Road in Broomhill.
When Gregorio came as a lecturer to the Biochemistry Department to Sheffield from Cambridge University he lived at Stephenson Hall for several months. He was a friendly chap who was warmly welcomed by the locals there and fellow scientists in the Department. The new accommodation was excellent, but for him not ideal, as Gregorio wanted a house for his family, and he frequently spent weekends back in Cambridge with them. At other times we ate breakfast and dinner in Hall. Rationing coupons had to be handed to the matron (flour still being in short supply after the war). Occasionally, he would enjoy a game of tennis on the adjacent courts.
Sheffield then was a very different city from now. I still have a copy of a photograph (see Figure 2), from a local newspaper of February 1952 that saw two fellow postgraduate students, the President of the Students’ Union, and me, signing a letter about the outrageous treatment of ethnic minorities at the Cutlers' Hall. It was sent to the High Commissioner for India, and the Mayor, to protest. This followed an incident when I accompanied two visiting researchers from India to a dance in the Cutlers' Hall, only to be refused entry. This event helped to change attitudes in what was even then not a cosmopolitan city, despite its inestimable contribution internationally to the war effort and the world-wide fame of the huge diversity of products of the Sheffield steel industry (vividly illustrated and recalled now at the Kelham Island Industrial Museum). 1954 was a year when, in the Senior Common room after dinner, Gregorio and others from the Department informally discussed ideas; predictions made there often later came to fruition.
Figure 1 Stevenson
Hall at Broomhill
Figure 2 From a local Sheffield newspaper of February 1952
Although Gregorio's interests were quite different from mine (on electrolytes, more similar to those of Bob Davies), he was always interested in what I was doing and ready to make helpful suggestions. He conducted brilliant work on 'rapid reactions' and used his mathematics effectively to assist in solving many problems that came up during the course of research generally in the Department. This was notably the case in a paper published in the Biochemical Journal Vol.59 No.4 entitled 'The kinetics of the exchange of the phosphate groups of adenosine triphosphate during oxidative phosphorylation’ by Gregorio Weber, Walter Bartley and Ron Whittam. The mechanism of ATP generation was a really hot topic then!
Figure 3 The MRC group laboratory used by Weber, Bartley, Kornberg, Whittam and others photographed in 2018
Figure 4 The view from that lab in 2018
