chemistry

John E. Walker

John E. Walker is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John E. Walker rather than just read about it. In short: Sir John Ernest Walker (born 7 January 1941) is a British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. As of 2015 Walker is Emeritus Director and Professor at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Key takeaways

John E. Walker belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John E. Walker to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John E. Walker from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sir John Ernest Walker (born 7 January 1941) is a British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997. As of 2015 Walker is Emeritus Director and Professor at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Early life and education Walker was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, the son of Thomas Ernest Walker, a stonemason, and Elsie Lawton, an amateur musician. He was brought up with his two younger sisters (Judith and Jen) in a rural environment and went to Rastrick Grammar School. At school, he was a keen sportsman and specialized in physical sciences and mathematics during his final three years there. He received a 3rd class Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from St Catherine's College, Oxford. Walker began his study of peptide antibiotics with Edward Abraham at Oxford in 1965 and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1969. During this period, he became interested in developments in molecular biology.

Career

From 1969 to 1971, Walker worked at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and from 1971 to 1974 in France. He met Fred Sanger, in 1974, at a workshop at the University of Cambridge. This resulted in an invitation to work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council, which became a long-term appointment. Among the other staff was Francis Crick, who was well known for his discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. At first, he analyzed the sequences of proteins and then uncovered details of the modified genetic code in mitochondria. In 1978, he decided to apply protein chemical methods to membrane proteins. In this way, Walker characterized the subunit composition of proteins in the mitochondrial membrane and the DNA sequence of the mitochondrial genome. His landmark crystallographic studies of the F1-ATPase, the catalytic region of the ATP synthase (done in collaboration with crystallographer Andrew Leslie), from bovine heart mitochondria revealed the three catalytic sites in three different conformations imposed by the position of the asymmetric central stalk. This structure supported the binding change mechanism and rotary catalysis for the ATP synthase (and related enzymes), one of the catalytic mechanisms proposed by Paul Boyer. This work, published in 1994, led to Walker's share of the 1997 Nobel prize for chemistry. Since this structure, Walker and his colleagues have produced most of the crystal structures in the PDB of mitochondrial ATP synthase, including transition state structures and protein with bound inhibitors and antibiotics. Scientists trained in Walker's group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge or MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit have gone on to determine crystal bacterial complex I and cryo-EM maps of mitochondrial complex I and vacuolar type ATPases.

Teaching and mentoring Many students and postdoctoral research fellows who studied with John Walker have gone on to independent research careers, including Leonid Sazanov, Postdoctoral Fellow (ISTA) and Daniela Stock, Postdoctoral Fellow (Sydney).

Awards and recognition Walker was elected an EMBO Member in 1984. He shared his Nobel Prize with the American chemist Paul D. Boyer for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate. They also shared the prize with Danish chemist Jens C. Skou for research unrelated to theirs (Discovery of the Na+/K+-ATPase). Sir John was knighted in 1999 for services to molecular biology. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1995. Walker is also a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. He became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2011 and in 2012 he was awarded the Copley Medal.

Personal life Walker married Christina Westcott in 1963, and has two daughters.

References

This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

External links Interview by Alan Macfarlane 14 January 2008 (video) Honorary members of the Mitochondrial Physiology Society

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John E. Walker

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John E. Walker claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John E. Walker before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John E. Walker ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John E. Walker

In research: John E. Walker appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John E. Walker in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John E. Walker is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1941 births, Alumni of St Catherine's College, Oxford, British Nobel laureates, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John E. Walker outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John E. Walker in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John E. Walker means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John E. Walker out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John E. Walker in simple terms?

Why does John E. Walker matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John E. Walker?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John E. Walker.