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Harry Gray: The Color Chemist
| Article
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10462 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1993 |
3,420 Words |
| Author
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Elizabeth J. Sherman
Elizabeth J. Sherman is editor of the Biographical Memoirs of
the National Academy of Sciences. |
Prof. Harry Gray, the six-foot-three California Institute of Technology inorganic chemist, National Academy of Sciences member, and likely candidate for a Nobel Prize, sometimes lectures as a horse or as a leopard. His students retaliate by gluing his hand to his telephone, turning the lecture hall seats backward, and on one memorable occasion binding a nude centerfold of him into the Caltech catalogue.
"It was tastefully done," chortles Gray. "To this day only a select few know if it was my body or not."
Students have turned Gray's office into Lavoisier's cabinet, complete with cobwebs, and into a high-tech miniature golf course with blow-drier tees and water hazards. (Though this last venture put Gray out in the hall for a month, he graciously concedes that the golf was "very elaborate, very exciting.")
Gray is himself a prankster, and his students and postdoctoral fellows follow suit. Yet many go on to become luminaries in the world of science. Seventy hold top academic jobs. As for his department, a recent Science News "citation impact" report bore the unequivocal headline: Caltech Chemistry No.1 in World.
Trained as a classical inorganic chemist, Gray today studies the tiny inorganic bits ("where the action is") in living molecules. This is "bioinorganic" chemistry, a new field Gray helped invent.
"Organic molecules contain carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen," he explains. "But we now know that practically everything organic also contains inorganic bits. Each mammoth hemoglobin molecule, for instance, has within it four tiny iron complexes that bind to oxygen molecules and carry them around."
Biochemists have long recognized the presence of trace metals in organic substances, but until Gray became interested in the color of blood, few realized just how critical the metal ions' structures are to the processes of life.
What makes a kid do science?
Harry Gray was born 57 years ago in Woodburn, Kentucky, close to the Tennessee border. In his day, Woodburn had some 200 residents; today, it has nearer 50. (The town recently voted 23 to 0 to discontinue a tax supporting its one streetlight.)
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