Title:	Holding Hands with Bacteria
Authors:	Štrbáňová, Soňa
Keywords:	Bacteria
Issue Date:	2016
Publisher:	Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg
Description:	This book is about Marjory Stephenson, almost forgotten but very significant British biochemist, exceptional woman and scientist, who in the 1930s opened new research fields—chemical and general microbiology—and stood at the cradle of the Society of General Microbiology. Books often have their own histories. The story of this one started in 1958 in the old building of the Faculty of Science in Prague, in the lecture theatre of the chemistry department. I was then a fourth year biochemistry student listening to the lecture of dozent Arnošt Kleinzeller, external member of the staff, whom we had not met before. Until this day, biochemistry consisted for us of its “static” and “dynamic” parts: we had learned about composition of living bodies, cellular enzymes and metabolic pathways, but this strangely looking man unlocked for us a new world of science. He spoke about Watson, Crick, Jacob and Monod, regulation processes going on in the cell we had never heard about and we hardly understood. The lecture had a flavour of a forbidden fruit since everything smacking of genetics used to be taboo in Communist Czechoslovakia of the 1950s. However, at that time barriers were slowly lifting and we were eagerly taking notes as no modern textbooks were available except rather outdated manuals. It was Dr. Kleinzeller’s course where I heard first time in my life also about Marjory Stephenson whose Bacterial Metabolism Dr. Kleinzeller recommended us as one of the best contemporary books on biochemistry. I borrowed from the University Library the 1949 edition, which to my surprise was available, but admittedly I did not find it interesting at all, and so Stephenson’s name was shelved for many years into the background of my mind. Only many years later I got to understand the high esteem Dr. Kleinzeller had for Stephenson. He succeeded to flee to England in 1939 from the Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia; Hans Krebs, Frederick Hopkins and Marjory Stephenson provided him refuge in their laboratories and introduced him to biochemical work with microbial model systems1 which he brilliantly applied in his research after returning to his homeland.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/74214
ISBN:	978-3-662-49734-0
Appears in Collections:	Chemistry

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