>I am giving a lecture on 'Radioimmunoassay -The Past' and I am
>trying to obtain photographs of key figures in this field from the UK
>preferably from the late 60s and 70s. The Yanks are easy but we
>Brits and Europeans are more camera shy or at least photographs
>did not appear in conference proceeedings. I need any stars
>Hales, Landon, Rees, Marks, Bloom, Hunter, Bagshawe et al. If
>anyone has anything suitable that they can email in a form suitable
>for Powerpoint or a photograph which I can scan and return I would
>be very grateful. I need this material by 24th Sept at the latest. If
>yo have photos of these individuals when they are how do you say
>more mature then let me know.
>
>Many thanks in anticipation for your help. This lecture is great fun.
>
>Mike Addison
Mike,
I thought that you had forgotten me, but I understand you have called
my lab and we are e-mailing you a fairly recent photograph of myself
- wizened, of course, being - how do you say - overripe?
I am incidentally at our house in Sardinia - technically on vacation,
but engaged in unremitting professional activity, so this is no
holiday.
With regard to the subject matter of your talk, you may not be aware
that Ros Yalow and I were selected by whosoever does these things as
the "pioneers" of radioimmunoassay at the 1998 James L Waters
Symposium (which is normally a part of the US Pittcon Conference,
attended by 30,000 analytical chemists in 1998). The JLW symposia
are held to celebrate the pioneers in important areas of analytical
chemistry, the 1998 symposium being dedicated to the pioneers of RIA.
Frankly I was surprised they didn't invite Nick Hales and /or Leif
Wide (or both), but there is often a degree of national myopia in
such events and this is probably the reason.
Ros was not in great shape, being taken to the dinners etc that form
part of this celebration in a wheel chair. I was somewhat embarrassed
by meeting her again since the last time we spoke was when we in the
throes of the bitter controversy concerning the basic
physicochemical/statistical theory relating to RIA design which - in
a fortuitous way - she and Sol Berson got completely wrong.
"Fortuitous" because everyone that believed their ideas to be correct
- i.e pretty well everyone in the world in the immunoassay field -
missed the possibility of developing microarray technology, now the
biggest thing since sliced bread on the microanalytical scene.
The procedings of this meeting were published (as usual) in an
American journal (J of Chemical Education I seem to recall), but I
had to give a somewhat similar talk at the 1998 Oak Ridge Conference
as inaugural recipient of the AACC Edwin F Ullmann Award, and this
was published in Clin Chem (see R.Ekins. Ligand assays: from
electrophoresis to miniaturized microarrays. Clin Chem, 44, 2015-30,
1998) which you should look at if you want to read of the origins of
RIA on this side of the Atlantic.)
Incidentally, in the slide I showed at that meeting indicating some
of the main events in the immunoassay field, I omitted to include
Arquilla and Stavitsky, the true originators of the immunoassay of
insulin using what is now termed a 'competitive' (labelled analyte)
assay design. (I've modified the slide since so as to include them.)
In other words, Berson and Yalow simply substituted a radioactive
label for the tanned red cell label A & Q used in their assay,
thereby increasing sensitivity. I was certainly aware of their work
(which was published in or around 1956) which I recognised as based
on the same principles as I had proposed for hormone assay in 1954
(but which were rejected as unlikely to work by my scientific peers).
B & Y never referred to A&Q, which I think is regrettable, but I
believe that if you are going to review the RIA field it would be
appropriate do so.
With best wishes
Roger
--
Prof Roger Ekins MaA, PhD, DSc, FRS
Molecular Endocrinology
UCL Medical School
London W1N 8AA
Fax +44 20 7580 2737
Phone +44 20 7679 9410
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