Gilbert Smithson Adair
Gilbert Smithson Adair FRS[1] (21 September 1896 – 22 June 1979) was an early protein scientist who used osmotic pressure measurements to establish that haemoglobin was a tetramer under physiological conditions.Gilbert Smithson Adair was born on 21 September 1896 in Whitehaven, son of Harold and Anna Mary Adair (née Jackson), who were Quakers.Gilbert and his sister Anna were initially taught at home by a governess.Later, Gilbert was taught at the Quaker Bootham School, where he was a boarder.The family, meanwhile had moved to Egremont, where Harold Adair was managing director of Wyndham Mining Company Ltd. an iron ore mine.[2] Adair entered King's College, Cambridge from 1915 to 1917, gaining a first in Natural Sciences.He was soon employed by the Food Investigation Board, a wartime research group set up by the DSIR to determine how to prevent wastage of food, particularly fish, meat, fruits, etc.In 1931, he became assistant director of the Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge.Adair was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1939.Muriel had entered Girton College in 1918, and went on to obtain a research fellowship at Newnham.[4] As an incidental historical note, Adair provided the purified haemoglobin that Max Perutz used for the first structure determination of any protein (by X-ray crystallography).[1] Gilbert Smithson Adair died in Cambridge on 22 June 1979.is called the Adair equation for four binding sites.