Biographical Memoirs Volume 63 (1994) / Chapter Skim
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8. Albert Baird Hastings
8. Albert Baird Hastings
Pages 172-217
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From page 173... ...
Baird remarked how frequently career success is attributed to the influence of a superior high school teacher rather than to college teachers. Baird told of a notable evening in his senior year at the home of Marthens and a teaching colleague, attencled by Baircl's favorite crony anc!
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From page 174... ...
At the end of this course, Bartell asked Baird if he would like to serve as his assistant in the physical chemistry course. The assistant had to prepare the apparatus and solutions needed and also help with instructing the students in the laboratory.
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From page 175... ...
Since there was no more physical chemistry to take, he elected to begin graduate courses with some advanced quantitative chemistry, mineralogy, and bacteriology under F
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From page 176... ...
By mid-December, even though Kjeldahls and measures of free and conjugated phenols and of three kinds of sulfur had been added, he was ready to write a letter to Frederic S Lee, head of physiology at Columbia University, who was directly in charge of Baird's activity, to the effect that the program was no way to study fatigue, that it was a waste of federal money and of his time, and that, unless the government was prepared to study fatigue in animals under controlled laboratory conditions, he did not want to proceed.
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From page 177... ...
and Margaret Hastings were married May ill, 191S, and that on May 14, 1919, their son Alan Baird Hastings was born. The ongoing Public Health Service stipend of $2,400 was twice the Michigan stipend.
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From page 178... ...
Van Slyke wants to see you." Van Slyke, then editor of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, accepted the paper for publication then and there, on March 9, 1921. ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE PERIOD Van Slyke then asked Baird what he planned to do upon completion of his Ph.D.
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From page 179... ...
Baird joined with Van Slyke, John Plazin, Michael Heidelberger, James M Neill, and occasional visitors in the so far unsuccessful attempts to clearly delineate differences in the CO2 absorption curves of oxygenated and reduced blood.
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From page 180... ...
So the laboratory stucly of the acict-base balance of blooct entered a rich phase on its way to becoming an ultimate classic as clescribecl in 1932, in Quantitative Clinical Chemistry by Peters and Van Slyke. "Van Slyke always said that this was the happiest and most productive time of his life, anct it certainly was for me," Baird saicI.
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From page 181... ...
Furthermore, he invited Hastings to Berlin-DahIem, anal, during the following summer stay by the young Hastings family, Baird learner! to his pleasure the use of the goIcT-leaf electroscope, actually for measuring the coefficient of solubility of raclon in yeast cells and red blood cells.
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From page 182... ...
After an earlier excursion with Harold B Van Dyke to compare the blood distribution of bromide as a function of pH with that of the previously studied chloride ion, Hastings undertook the major problem of describing the movement of water and ions between the extra- and intracellular phases of muscle and other tissues.
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From page 183... ...
Also at the Univeristy of Chicago, the equilibrium cletermining the deposition and dissolution of bone salt was clarified by x-ray demonstration that the latter is a carbonate-apatite rather than a form of a simple calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate. With Franklin McLean, Bairc!
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From page 184... ...
McLean and Hastings also showed with James Davis that thyroxin very graclually lowers the oxygen consumption of the surviving frog heart. During an interval in 1930 as a visiting professor at the Peking Union Medical College, Baird worked with Hsien Wu of Folin-Wu fame and with Francis Dieuaicle and gained experience in studying the acicl-base balance in eclema.
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From page 185... ...
reporte c! the distribution of inorganic ions in various tissues and showed that the sodium and chloride in soft tissues, except the reel blood
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From page 186... ...
Baird joined in the changes in direction. IJowry's finding of an especially rapid exchange of hepatic potassium for sodium led Baird in subsequent work to prefer a potassium-enriched Ringer solution for studying glycogen formation by liver slices, although calcium and sodium ions were ultimately also shown to be needed for optimal glycogen formation in work with Buchanan.
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From page 187... ...
in the micIforties to clarify how acid-base balance data shouict be interpreted clinically. With a succession of colleagues, Baird undertook, particularly after the war, the study that can be clescribed as "factors affecting choices among alternate pathways of metabolism." Using ~4C-labeling, Baircl and his colleagues determined the rate at which glucose is phosphorylatecI to glucose-6-phosphate; how much of that product is metabolized to pyruvate by the Embclen-Meyerhoff pathway; how much is further metabolized via the citric acid pathway to carbon ctioxicle and water, and how much is cliverted through the pentose phosphate pathway; how much is converted to glycogen via the uricline phosphate-glucose pathway; and how much is simply hyclrolyzecl to glucose by the hepatic enzyme glucose-6-phosphatase.
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From page 188... ...
Baird continuect his teaching at Harvard on a half-time basis. Of the 594 research contracts fundecl by the CMR on a wide range of problems, those on antimalarials, blooct and bloocl substitutes, ant!
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From page 189... ...
Metabolic Disease Council and the Heart Council, four councils in all.
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From page 190... ...
Hastings had contributed heavily in his services on the CMR, however, to the concentration of power represented by this "department" and therefore presumably bore some responsibility for the possible consequences of the mode of its dissolution. Harvard President Pusey appointed Baird to head an advisory committee with a multi-institutional membership.
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From page 191... ...
These adjustments occurred with a minimum of unnecessary public attention. EARLY HARVARD RETIREMENT The handling of the laboratory experiments on the acidbase balance in an integrated fashion between the departments of biological chemistry and physiology through Baird's years at Harvard should surely be part of any history of interdisciplinary integration in medical education.
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From page 192... ...
Now that Baird neecled a career change himself to correspond to his personal requirement for significant lifelong activity, he found the courage to veer strongly to a new course that he ever after regarded as fortunate. The factors considered above led Baird to broach to Harvard a clesire to withdraw from the position of head, in order to return to the laboratory at Harvard to try to again enjoy personal experimental work.
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From page 193... ...
These two together first confirmed the effect of pH increases in stimulating glucose synthesis in liver slices, provided that the buffer used was bicarbonate-carbonic acid and not the artificial "Iris," nor orthophosphate at unphysiological concentrations. When the bicarbonate and carbonic acid concentrations were kept at a fixed ratio by varying the two together, it became clear that at constant pH the effect of changing the aggregate CO2 concentration on glycogen synthesis from glucose was a large one, just as large as the effect of raising the pH at constant HCO3 or at constant pCO2.
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From page 194... ...
. ~ ~ With Longmore, strong stimulatory effects of CO2 concentration were also shown on the synthesis from labeled acetate of long-chained fatty acids, whether these entered triglycerides or phospholipids.
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From page 195... ...
During the time that Bairct's lab at Scripps was in operation, at least ten guest investigators carried out research with him. He also supervised the doctoral thesis research of Michael Pilson in marine biology at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography on the electrolyte composition of the body Quilts of the abalone.
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From page 196... ...
NOTE 1. The several brief quotations in this memoir are taken from Hasting's life story, Crossing Boundaries, and can generally be located with its index.
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From page 197... ...
Louis University, 1965; Columbia University, 1967; Indiana University, 1972 AWARD S The President's Medal for Merit, Committee for Medical Research, 1948; Honorary Professorship, University of San Marcos, Peru, 1957; Distinguished Service Award, Medical Alumni Association, Univer
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From page 198... ...
Baird Hastings Symposium, University of Michigan, October 23-24, 1965; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, silver plaque citation, 1965; Brookhaven National Laboratory, citation for service, 1965; Sesquicentennial Award, University of Michigan, 1967; Citation, Department of Physiology, Columbia University, 1967; Distinguished Achievement Service Medallion, San Liege Heart Association, 1972 VISITING POSTS AND LECTURESHIPS Lecturer, University of Southern California, summer 1924; Visiting Scientist, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, 1925; Visiting Professor of Biochemistry, Peiping Union Medical College, 1930-31; Benjamin Knox Rachford Lectureship, University of Cincinnati, 1937; Harvey Lecture, 1940; Visiting Scientist, Carlsberg Laboratory, Copenhagen, 1950; Fulbright Lecturer, Oxford University, 1952; Member, U.S. Delegation to the International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Geneva, 1954; Visiting Professor, John Curtin School for Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra, 1957; Banting Memorial Lecture, American Diabetes Association, 1962; Lecture for American College of Physicians Award, 1964; Black Memorial Lecture, Los Angeles Academy of Medicine, 1965; Guest Investigator, U.S.
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From page 199... ...
Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health: Member, National Advisory Cancer Council, 1943-46; Member, National Advisory Health Council, 1947-48; Member, National Advisory Arthritis and Metabolic Disease Council, 1956-60 Member, National Advisory Heart Council, 1960-64; National Heart Council Israel Research Survey Consultant, National Heart Institute, 1964-67 Program Consultant, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1964-65 Training Review Committee for Aging, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1965-69
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From page 200... ...
200 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS ADDITIONAL ADVISORY ACTIVITIES Advisory Council, Life Insurance Medical Research Fund, 194650; Associate, John Winthrop House, 1947-59 Board of Directors, American Bureau for Medical Aid to China, 1962-68; Director Emeritus, 1968Board of Scientific Advisors, Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research, 1957-62 Board of Syndics, Harvard University Press, 1936-46; 1947-51; 1953-55; 1956-58 Consultant, The Regents of The University of California, Laboratory for Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology, 1959Consultant in Chemistry, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, 1935-59 Faculty Advisory Committee, Nieman Fellow, 1949-59 Member, Advisory Council, Children's Hospital Research Foundation, 1949-59 Member, Executive Committee of the Growth Society, 1945-46 National Advisory Board, Physiological Research Laboratory, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, 1963-65; Chairman, 1963-65 National Scientific Advisory Committee, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and Institute, 1963-; Chairman, 1964 Overseer's Committee to Visit the Harvard University Press, 195065 61 54 Research Council, San Diego Zoological Society, 1964-70; Scientific Advisory Board, Cancer Research Institute, New England Deaconess Hospital, 1949-70 Scientific Advisory Board, Massachusetts General Hospital, 195964; Scientific Advisory Board, McLean Hospital, 1945-59 Scientific Advisory Committee, The Nutrition Foundation, 1947Trustee, Protein Foundation, 1959-70 Trustee, Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, 1950Member, National Advisory Board, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, 1965-77 Member, Visiting Committee for the Medical School of the University of Oklahoma, 1969-70 Member, Research Committee, San Diego County Heart Association, 1966-; Chairman, 1969; Member, Task Force, 1972 Member, National Advisory Committee, 1971; Advisory Confer
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From page 201... ...
ALBERT BAIRD HASTINGS 201 ence on Aging, 1970; Member, post-Conference Board, 1972 Member, National Advisory Committee, Marine Biomedical Institute, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, 1971-77 Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Committee on the History of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 1968-87
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From page 202... ...
46:233-56. A hydrogen electrode vessel adapted for titrations.
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From page 203... ...
Blood changes and clinical symptoms following clinical and following oral administration of phosphates.
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From page 204... ...
II. The solubility of tertiary calcium phosphate in salt solutions and biological fluids.
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From page 205... ...
Hiller, and J Sendroy, in Studies of gas and electrolyte equilibria in the blood.
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From page 206... ...
DeCosta. The effect of thyroxin on the tissue metabolism of excised frog heart.
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From page 207... ...
I The effect of an increase of total body water produced by the intravenous injection of isotonic salt solutions.
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From page 208... ...
Chemical changes in the heart following experimental temporary coronary occlusion. Trans.
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From page 209... ...
Metabolism of lactic acid containing radioactive carbon in the a or ,8 position.
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From page 210... ...
Histochemical changes associated wih aging.
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From page 211... ...
The effect of the ionic environment on the synthesis of glycogen from glucose in rat liver slices.
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From page 212... ...
Studies on carbohydrate metabolism in rat liver slices.
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From page 213... ...
Studies on carbohydrate metabolism in rat liver slices.
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From page 214... ...
Studies on carbohydrate metabolism in rat liver slices.
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From page 215... ...
Studies on carbohydrate metabolism in rat liver slices.
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From page 216... ...
216 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1968 With W
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