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For Paul Boyer, the Nobel Prize was "an unexpected pleasure."
It had been 20 years since he formulated a hypothesis to describe
what he calls "the most prominent chemical reaction in the
whole world." It is the process by which molecules produce
ATP (adenosine triphosphate), thereby transmuting light, air, water
and food into the energy required for both plant and animal life.
Boyer had been greeted with disbelief when he theorized that the
previously mysterious process is the work of a "beautiful little
machine" that operates within enzymes on the molecular level.
His proposed resolution of a major unsolved problem in biochemistry
threatened to "change the paradigm," Boyer remembers,
and "the leading journal" in his field —The
Journal of Biological Chemistry—declined to publish his
work.
Since then, the tiny machine, which Boyer calls an "internal
rotation mechanism," has been photographed in action. But at
the time he proposed it, Boyer's hypothesis was so original that
a methodology to either confirm or disprove it had not been invented.
With his work still clouded by uncertainty, Boyer decided that his
career was over. In 1989 he closed his laboratory at UCLA and retired
to the streams and mountains of Wyoming.
A few years later, Boyer experienced "one of the warmest moments
of my life" when he learned that British biochemist John Walker
had worked out the methodology required to demonstrate whether Boyer
had been right or wrong. By that time, Boyer had been gone from
UCLA for so long that the departmental secretary didn't know where
to send Walker's manuscript. But obscurity wasn't a problem for
long.
Using Walker's methodology, one of Boyer's former graduate students
"did some elegant chemical work to demonstrate that the molecular
rotation actually occurred." Boyer's hypothesis, finally, had
been proven correct. For work that so enriched understanding of
the life process itself, he and Walker were jointly awarded the
Nobel prize in 1997.
It was, Boyer says, the "capstone" of his career. Although
it did not lead to further work on his part, he observes that the
secretaries at UCLA now know where to find him. He has forgiven
the "leading journal" that rejected his work. In retrospect,
he says the Nobel Prize was "the last thing I had in mind when
I happened to pick a problem with such an unusual solution,"
and he credits his choice to pure luck. The other major factor that
got him the Prize, he says, was "longevity: I outlived all
my competitors."
For others, longevity may be one of the benefits of Boyer's research.
He has enhanced understanding of the kind of damage caused at the
molecular level by disease and aging. One potential application
of his work is to prevent that damage from happening to the cells
of human beings.
And the prize itself will help to bring about that, and other benefits
as well. Boyer says "one of the services of the Nobel Foundation"
is to call attention to basic science so that the importance of
new fields can be recognized. "It's a pleasure to my former
students; it gives them a boost. It makes people who've hired them
think they're better because they worked with a Nobel Prize winner."
In fact, the research groups developed at UCLA and other American
institutions are, for Boyer, an "important return on investment
that is hardly ever recognized by the public" that pays for
them. There is "a tremendous apprentice teaching system, a
relationship between professors, graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows" that provides "the most effective tool that society
could develop" for encouraging basic science and all its beneficial
consequences.
— adapted from a story by Warren Olney in UCLA
Magazine
Paul Boyer was born in 1918.
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