LORD TODD Combridge University Combridge, Englmd
Interview with Lord Todd PETER FARAGO Editor Chemistry i n Britain Farago:
Todd:
Let us go back to the beginning. What made you think 01 science? What made you think of chemistry? At what stage did you think you might like to become a chemist? It is very hard to pinpoint. although I remember at one point I thought I would like to do medicine. At about the age of 10, however, I feN out of a tree in the garden, dislocated my elbow and cracked the upper bone in my left arm. The doctors set the elbow, but the arm locked. Two 01 them came out one day, and one of them put the half Nelson on me and put his hand over my mouth. The other man straightened my arm. And that finished my interest in medicine as a career. At about the same time as I was thinking 01 doing medicine I used to fiddle around in the bathroom at home with odds and ends of acid and whalnot-I got a fearful hiding for ruining my mother's new stair carpet by spilling sulfuric acid on it, whereby if developed mysterious holes. I probably took to chemistry in secondary school because I had good teachers in chemistry. I happened to be good at nearly everything I tried. I was almost certainly the best linguist in the school at that time, and I was good at mathematics, physics and most other subjects except art, but chemistry appealed to me most. Physics I regard as an excessively dull subject, and this is probably because I had excessively dull teachers. Towards the tail-end of my school career I first encountered organic chemistry, and I began to think it was a good deal more interesting Man the rest of chemistry; it was systematic, and the building up of complex molecules Such as occurred in nature with all their stereochemical and structural variations appealed to me. From that moment on I did not want to do anything except organic chemistry. I have always delined organic chemistry as the chemistry of living matter. That to me is organic chemistry. Partly because of the dislike I took to physics when I was at school, I have never regarded physical chemistry as a very attractive subject. I took my l i n t degree in chemistry in Glasgow, and when I took the honors degree, Professor T. S. Patterson, who was doing work on optical activity, asked me to do research with him. I did one year with Patterson. I tried to rationalize some of his ideas, but I came to the conclusion that I was not sulliciently in-
Journal of Chemical Education
by Peter Farago terested or qualified mathematically to develop the theory 01 this subject, and I did not think that other people in this country, like Lowry, were going to get anywhere either. Patterson encouraged me to get clear of Glasgow, and I did, going to Frankfurt-amMain. I n those days not many people went lrom this country to Germany. The reason t chose Frankfurt was that at that time there were in Germany two places where a lot 01 foreigners were going, chiefly lrom America: Munchen and Gottingen. I did not want to go to a place that was full of American students where they mostly talked English. I n Frankfurt-am-Main there was Walter Borsche, who had been a pupil 01 Windaus, and there was Julius won Braun, who was a reaction chemist, and I thought that was a pretty lair mixture of interests and talent. On the language side I got what I wanted, because I became almost completely lluent in German. I1 you happened to be a Scotsman, the DSlR rather ignored you in 1928 as far as giving maintenance grants for research was concerned, but I got a Carnegie Research Scholarship. I got f 100 a year lrom the Carnegie Trust, and when I said I was going to Germany I was raised to f 150 a year. So off I went to Germany a1 £150 a year. I lived on pretty close to f 150, 1 suppose. Mind you, I was living pretty tight on this sum. I told Borsche I would like to work on bile acids, which I did, and that was really my lirst taste of natural product chemistry, which I liked very much. I showed that the then accepted Windaus-Wieland lormula lor sterols must be wrong. I had some trouble With that one, because Borsche was not at all pleased that I should challenge his idol, Ado11 Windaus; lor, i l I was right, then some of the work published by Windaus must be wrong. And he thought that this was not the kind 01 thing that one should do, particularly a young whippersnapper from England. I persuaded Borsche to publish my work in the Zeitschritt fur Physiologische Chemie in 1931, and in that paper I suggested that bile acids and the sterols were synthesized in living organisms lrom larnesol. I always look back and think that it is very funny that I should have put down farnesol as the precursor of the sterols 01
the bile acids, even if my formula was wrong. However, I finished that work, and took my PhD; and, very much to my surprise, I was offered an 1851 Senior Studentship. With that I went to Sir Robert Robinson at Oxtord in 1931, and when f went there Robinson asked me il I would like to do some anthocyanin work. t said, "Yes, I would like lo have a go." Welt, I had a bit of luck, and within about six or seven months 01 starling I had synthesized several of the digtucosidic anthocyanins. I think it was partly because I was bloody-minded enough not to accept some 01 the statements that were around about whal could and could not be done. I went back to tirst principles, and decided to put sugar into phlorogtucinaidehyde directly by a very simple and obvious method that, in fact, worked. I finished that work, and then f played around a bit with some mould coloring matters that Harold Raistrick had been concerned with, and I more or less cleaned up the helminthosporin group. I did at that time get a quantity of the cotton-seed coloring matter gossypot, which was worked on years later by Roger Adams, but I really didn't get far with it because I was doing too many other lhings. I was also interested in the possibility that you could classify lungi on the basis of the coloring matters they contained. I thus had a tittle swing at chemical taxonomy in a period before it was popufar, and 1 went through aN the literature that I could find on anthraquinones in nature. t found that there were certain types of substitution that seemed to be tound in the higher plants and other types of substitution that were found in fungi. But there was a bit of an anomaly in one case, namely in a couple of anthraquinones produced by insech-fhe cochineal insect and the oak kermes. The trouble with cochineat was that it looked to me as if it ought to have been a fungal product. So I looked up the entomoiogy books, and found that in the cochineal insect there are symbiotic micro-organisms living in special cetts-mycetomes. This work I couldn't fotlow up at the time, but later on it was to lead me to a study of the aphid coloring matters. I t was fun with Robert Robinson. The tirst occasion on which I ever met Sir Robert was in his room in the Dyson Perrins Lab, when I went down to Oxtord to work with him. I had never actually me1 him before. I went into his room and said, "Good afternoon." He said, "You have come lo see about some research," t said, "Yes." He said, "Welt, I will tell you. You know we have been working on anthocyanin synthesis-a very interesting subject. Now it you take veratric acid, and heat it with phosphorus pentachtoride, you get an acid chloride; and if you treat the acid .chloride with diazomethane you ought to get a diazoketone, and that on hydroiysis-1 don't know if you know this reaction-ought to give you the keto-alcohol, RCOCH20H. Now we might do that, and if we can put sugar on to the alcohol this will give a component from which one might make anthocyanins. So I would like you to study the preparation 01 the diazoketone and the preparation of the alcohol from it." And t looked at him and I said, "Yes, but what do I do when that is finished? When do we get on to the research?" And Sir Robert jumped up and said, "What?!" And I said, "When do we gel on lo the research?" He said, "Who are you?" I said, 'My name's Todd." "Good God!" he said, " I thought you were a Part I t student!" Then he said, "Forget it," and we talked about something else. That was the first occasion I met him. But after that it was fun. He had a room next to the tab in which Lady Robinson was always working, and from there was a tittle passageway leading to a tab in which two of us worked-Bertie Btount, whom I had encountered in Germany before, and mysetl-and Sir Robert was always dashing in and out.
Farago: . Do you think that sort of excitement and involvement stilt exists? It would seem to me to have an influence on teaching chemistry. It raises an affitude towards chemistry, which musf spill over towards the students. Todd: Yes. I think thts is true, although ot course perhaps my contact with Robert Robinson was closer than that most people, and this came, I think, in part from the tact that I was in a tab just alongside his own. Atthough I was young at the time, I was a fairly mature chemist when I was working with him, and he did speak very freely about all sorts of things. He was a fantastic fellow in those days. A tot of people could not get along with him, of course, because he had no time tor toots, but he was just bemendous, a tremendous fellow, and in a class by himself as an organic chemist. i n 1934 George Barger, who was a friend of Robert Robinson and subsequently of me, came down to Oxford in a great old stew. Jansen in Holland, who had tirst isolated vitamin Bj in Batavia in 1926, had written to George, who was haw Dutch, and said, "George, would you take up the chemistry of this vitamin?" because he knew that the I. G. Farbenindustrie were starting to operate on 61,and that in America the MercL group were also starting up, and he wanted George to try and do something. So George agreed. The only thing was, he did not quite know where to start, so he came trolling down to Oxford to see if Robert could suggest any way he could get some help. Did Robert know anybody who would be ready to take on this operation? Robert presumably suggested that I would perhaps do it because Bertie Btount and f had come back from Germany and worked in Oxford with certain techniques that other people did not have in this country. For one thing, we worked on a very much smaller scale than most people then did. I thought, "This is right up my street: I will go and have a shot at it, because this vitamin business looks like something for me." I left Oxford and went up lo Edinburgh-i took a considerable cut in money to go, too -but I went up there and started in on 6,. Welt, this got me pretty deeply interested in the vitamin field, and also, since i was in the medical school there, I got very much connected with pharmacologists, physiologists, and whatnot, so that my orientation towards lhings that were interesting from a medical and biological point of view was emphasized. Alter the Bq synthesis, I became interested in vitamin E, and i used also to give a bit of a hand with the natural product work that George Barger was doing. I began to work with vitamin E, and then in 1936, when Guttand had left the Lister tnstitute to go to Nottingham, they were looking tor a reader lor the Lister Institute. I was asked to go there, but I remembered Robison and his people there did not in fact make me a reader when I went, because they felt I was too young i"we can't have a boy like this in a senior position like a readership"). This was, as it turned out, very tunny ( I was then about 28), because I had only been there for three months when they tried to make me a professor in Toronto, and within a year the Americans tried to get me to go to Pasadena not tong after they had taken Linus Pauling. They wanted Linus to head up physical, and me the organic side. This was very disturbing for me Lister, so they made me a reader. I went out to Pasadena in 1938. I t was beautiful. My wife and I looked at houses there. We lhought we would go, although I was a bit alarmed by the fact that the people there apparently did not know what was happening in the world, and I was sure there was a war coming. I could not see that the Californians would do anything about it, and I felt that, it I went there, the moment a war broke out I would have to walk out and come back here. But I stilt might have
2
Volume51. Number 7, July 1974
/
433
a very wise remark to me: when someone was advocating the American system 01 having a lull-time scientilic adviser, he pointed out that i l you take a tintclass scientist and put him wholly to work in science policy, at the end 01 three years he is no longer a lintclass scientist. Politics is a matter of decision--an entirely dilferent kind 01 decision lrom that one meets in science-and too many people in the past have made the mistake 01 thinking that, because they happen to be good at science, they must be good at everything else. This just does not follow. I t is not uncommon to meet scientists whose scientilic opinions one admires and would take at any time, but whose political views are about as much value as those of the dustman. Farago: What are your views on the way we use and educate scientists? I sometimes think that we were too successful in the Todd: 10 years after the war in pushing science and technology. Numbers were increasing in the universities, and there were constant cries 01 "More scientists. More technologisls." Well, we did this very well. By the end of the 50s and the beginning 01 the 60s, the idea that there should be a vast increase in the number of people who were given higher education became realizable. We moved to expand the universities, and increase the number going forward; this was done a1 a time when we had just sold to the public the idea that science and technology were the important things. The result was that we perhaps pushed too many people into that kind of education, and we obviously couldn't cope with them all on the same basis. While it is true that we needed more scientists and technologists, and ihat industry needed to use such people far more than it did in the pasl, if you looked at things objectively it was clear lhat you could not go on increasing ICl's recruitment from 30 this year to 50 the next, and then up to 100. and so on; otherwise the whole populalion would soon be in ICI. I1 is of course rather depressing, allhough not perhaps unexpected, that we currently find a drop in ihe numbers entering chemistry, and lhat jobs for graduates are in short supply. On the other hand, remember Mat all these things are cyclical. There may be a tough time lor a bit, but things will adjust. Recruitment will come into line with the demand, and I am not realty worried about it in the longer lerm. I would get worried onfy-and I don't think I need be worried yet -if it appeared that the people who wifl make the best scienlists were turning away lrom science. The people who are not Me best but are just pretty good I would not be worried about; they will adjust themselves. What really matters is that the real topliners are not frightened away from science. That may not be a very popular view among some people in universities who would go in for inllation of numbers at the expense of quality. The kind of scientific education that I went through (and which I later purveyed in the university) served me, I think, well. I was aiming speccilically at a career in science, and in particular in chemistry, and my objectives were research and the lurtherance 01 chemistry-not just in a pure sense, but also industrially and economkally. I am a chemist, but I am not a "pure" chemist; I am interested in all aspects. That is one kind of science education. I don't believe that it is suitable lor everybody. I lhink that what we are going to see in this country is a move over to a triple system of higher education. We must continue to have institutions in which people like me get trained-lhe professionals, the people who want to go really deeply into things. I think one also needs institutions where that is not going to be the object, but where one will give something which is rather akin to the old Scottish MA degree, which was st;# flourishing when I was an undergraduate. For thal degree one always had to do at least one science subject, and sometimes mathemat-
ics as welt. I1 one could get rid 01 the absurd nonSense which in England has led a1 universiiies to concentrate almost wholly on honors degrees, and get institutions that would produce something like the Scottish MA, you would have institutions which would be doing the kind 01 job that is needed for a very large number 01 young people. You would then have people in business, law, etc. who knew what science was about and could understand ils rationale. And 01 course there is a third form of education, which is straight technician training. That again is not an inlerior form of education at all; it is simply designed lor a specialist of a different type lrom the professional scientist--a man who is not necessarily creative but who can put ideas into operation under direction. American education has developed very much that way, and it has already gone a long way towards stratilication. Everybody takes some course at college, and then a certain number go to what we would recognize as universilies-a relatively sman number of these which are in effect, graduate institutions. I don't know il we will go that way. We might very easily because one 01 Ihe things that has struck me very forcibly during my life is how the inhabitants of this country insist on looking at the United States and saying, "You know, they are such wonderful people. Why don't we do the same as they do?" And then they proceed to do what the Americans were doing 50 years ago but which they stopped doing 25 years ago. And so we throw away systems which we have buill up by experience over a much longer period than the Americans. We throw these away in order to adopt systems that the Americans have already found wanting. Then we think we are in forprogress! Farago: How do you see the lulure of chemistry? Todd: i do not think that chemistry is an exhausted science. It is only an exhausted science if you assume that science does not change. After all, you have got to remember that science was broken up into a series of disciplines in the last century, in order to simplify and regularize the teaching and operation of it. These divisions were made in the light 01 existing knowledge. Now, as knowledge increases, it surely does no1 lollow that these divisions should remain. One of the weaknesses of talking about chemistry being an exhausted science, or of physics as a developing science, is ihat these terms today should not have the meaning that they used lo have. Where I mentioned some 01 ihe directions in which I thought we would have to go in chemistry-where I would go, and my interest would take me-I was talking of areas about which quite a lot 01 chemists, possibly even today, would Snort and say, "This is not chemislry at all." Organic chemistry today is not what it was when I began in the 20's. If I were to look at organic chemistry simply as I knew it in ihe past, I would think it is fairly wen exhausled; but it has moved on, and it now goes into other areas. I1 is evolving, and as bits 01 if become 01 no particular interest, others replace them. If you go back 50 years to 1923, at thal time, believe it or not, there were people who were full of enlhusiasm lor preparaing an optically active ailene, or linding out whether you could demonstrate the more exofic predictions of the van't Holf theory. Who would bother about oplically active compounds of thal type today? That kind of stereochemistry is an exhausted subject. Stereochemistry in general seemed by and large an exhausted subject until the early JO's, when conformational analysis came in, and the dynamic aspects of stereochemistry came to the fore. That kind of slereochemistry is still lining away happily. I am not a prophet, but it could easily be that in 10 years' time it will be dead as the dodo and one won't bolher about if any more. And then you mighl say again, "Stereochemistry is dead''-and you would probably be wrong.
