William Dobinson Halliburton, F. R. S. (1860-1931) pioneer of British biochemistry?

Abstract

K. E. Rothschuh remarked in his History oj Physiology that when Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1861—1947) went to Cambridge to teach physiological chemistry in 1898, ‘there were no true biochemists [in England]’ (1). That statement poses questions both about the nature of a true biochemistry and about the scope of biography and its place in the history of biochemistry. While there has been for some time an awareness of the importance of Hopkins’s contribution to the emergence of biochemistry in this country (2) many of his contemporaries and predecessors, who would have claimed an interest in ‘biochemistry’ or ‘chemical physiology’ have eluded the historian’s attention. Among that large group one thinks of William Roberts (1830-1899) (3), Arthur Gamgee (1841—1909) (4), A. Sheridan Lea (1853—1915) (5), Cornelius O ’Sullivan (1842—1907) (6), Horace Brown (1848-1925) (7), Joseph Green (1848-1914) (8), and the subject of this biographical essay, William Dobinson Halliburton, F.R.S. (1860—1931) (9). Gowland Hopkins, himself, in a retrospective assessment, came to regard Halliburton as a pioneer in his own discipline: ‘He was the first in this country, by his works and his writing, to secure for biochemistry general recognition and respect’ (10).