chemistry

Tom Brown (chemist)

Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist) rather than just read about it. In short: Tom Brown FRSC FRSE (born 10 November 1952) is a British chemist, biotechnologist, and entrepreneur. He is the Professor of Nucleic acid chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Tom Brown FRSC FRSE (born 10 November 1952) is a British chemist, biotechnologist, and entrepreneur. He is the Professor of Nucleic acid chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford. Currently, he is serving as the President of the Chemical Biology Interface Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is best known for his contribution in the field of DNA Repair, DNA Click chemistry, and in the application of Molecular genetics in forensics and diagnostics. He co-founded three biotechnology companies: Oswel Research Products, ATDBio, and Primerdesign. As of January 2016, he is in the board of directors of last two.

Education and career Brown was born in Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire, and attended Broadway Grammar School there. As an undergraduate student, he attended University of Bradford to study chemistry where he obtained his bachelor's degree with first class honours, and was awarded the Griffin and George Prize for being the most outstanding graduate. In 1979, he earned his PhD from the same university, under the supervision of Prof Gordon Shaw. He then carried out his post-doctoral research at the University of Nottingham (with Leslie Crombie and Gerry Pattenden), University of Oxford (with John Jones), and at the University of Cambridge (with Olga Kennard OBE FRS). After these post-doctoral stints, he was appointed as a Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh where he was subsequently promoted to the rank of Reader and then to Professor. In 1995, he moved to the University of Southampton where he worked as a Professor of Chemical Biology. In 2013, Brown again moved, to take up position of the Professor of Nucleic acid chemistry at the University of Oxford where he now holds a joint position at the Department of Chemistry and Department of Oncology. In 2014, he was elected as the President of the Chemical Biology Interface Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry for a term of three years.

Research In early part of his academic career, Brown studied base-pair mismatch and DNA repair. Later he worked on the mutagenic effect of chemically modified DNA bases. In collaboration with Laurence Pearl, he elucidated the structural basis of excision repair by Uracil-DNA glycosylase. His group is also well known for rapid mutation analysis and for the application of Molecular genetics in forensics and diagnostics. In collaboration with AstraZeneca, they invented Scorpion Primers system, a fluorescence-based real-time PCR method that can identify mutations and Single-nucleotide polymorphism in human genome. Most recently, his group is focusing on the Click chemistry based chemical modification of DNA and its application in bionanotechnology sector. As of January 2016, Brown has published more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with many of his papers appearing in highly selective journals like Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Cell, Nucleic Acids Research, JACS, and PNAS. His papers have been cited over 18,000 times and he has an h-index 68.

Awards and honours Brown was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Edinburgh. Apart from that, he has received the following major honours in recognition of his research work:

1992: Brown received Makdougall Brisbane Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 1992: Brown was awarded Josef Loschmidt Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry 2004: Brown received Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship from the Royal Society. 2008: Brown delivered Keynote Lecture at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium, in the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, A*STAR. 2009: Brown received RSC Interdisciplinary Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry 2014: Brown received Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year Award. 2015: Brown delivered the invited lecture at the Nobel workshop, organised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Chalmers. 2015: Brown was awarded MPLS Impact lifetime Award by the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division (MPLS) of the University of Oxford 2016: Brown received the BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year 2016 award and BBSRC Innovator of the Year 2016 award.

Companies While working at the University of Edinburgh, Brown founded Oswel Research Products (the name 'Oswel' came from "Oligonucleotide synthesis" and "Wellcome Trust"), a company which was dedicated to automated DNA synthesis. Later, in 1995, the company moved to Southampton, along with Brown. In the year 1999, when the company had turnover of GBP 2.2 million and a profit of GBP 0.7 million, Eurogentec acquired Oswel. In 2004, Brown co-founded (along with two of his University of Southampton colleagues) Primerdesign, a company which designs and manufactures products for quantitative Real-time polymerase chain reaction. The company is best known for creating rapid Swine Flu detection kit in 2009, and for creating a test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain in 2020. In 2005, Brown founded ATDBio with an aim to synthesize chemically modified oligonucleotides for technical applications. As of June 2014, this company maintains two different labs at Southampton and Oxford.

References

External links Faculty Page on University of Oxford Website Brown Research Group Website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tom Brown (chemist)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist)

In research: Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist) 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: Tom Brown (chemist) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 births, Alumni of the University of Bradford, British chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tom Brown (chemist) in simple terms?

Why does Tom Brown (chemist) 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 Tom Brown (chemist)?

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 Tom Brown (chemist).