Section RM/1 - Correspondence with David Lipkin

Extent: 1 box, 17 folders

Bought in an aution lot by Anna Cullingford, July 2011

Collection of correspondence with Lipkin starting in 1953. Mainly general, family and work news, some research details and hand drawn experiments, news about various colleagues including Waldo Cohn, Leon Heppel, Jack Abrell, David Dunn, Jack Hitchborn, Mick Johnson, Marianne Mandel, Dick Matthews, C P Snow, Arthur Bancroft.

Admin History: Prof. David Lipkin (30.1.1913 - 31.3.2004), B.Sc. (Chemistry, Pennsylvania (1934), PhD, Berkeley (1939), Professor of Chemistry, Washington University, USA. He joined the department of chemistry at Washington University in 1946. Lipkin made an important contribution to the atomic bomb that fell on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. The second bomb to fall on Japan was a plutonium bomb made of an active metal; Lipkin made a nickel-coated protective skin on the bomb to make sure that it didn’t corrode before reaching the Pacific from the United States. He worked on nucleic acids and on synthetic applications of aromatic hydrocarbon free radical anions. He demonstrated new ways in which rings of carbon atoms can be added to the hydrocarbon naphthalene. Naphthalene is a coal tar derivative used extensively in the manufacturing of dyes, moth balls and explosives. The goal of this research was to synthesize steroids of interest to biochemists and biologists. Lipkin developed new compounds and new ways of making known compounds, which opened doors not only in basic genetic research, but also in the fields of pharmacology and clinical medicine. He was the first to synthesize cyclic AMP, a very important compound in biochemistry. His synthesis played a vital role in subsequent research by other scientists into the function of AMP in biology. In 1956 Lipkin invited Roy Markhm to work at Washington University, St Louis, with himself and W H Cook, exploring cyclic nucleotides. They investigated products formed when adenosine triphosphate is treated with barium hydroxide, isolating a compound from the reaction mixture which they identified as cyclic 3'-5' adenine dinucleotide later revising it to adenosine-3' :5'-phospahte. They published several articles together between 1957 and 1959 and continued to meet, share research and correspond until Roy's death in 1979.