Норман Хитли: Пенициллиннің дамуына үлес қосқан ғалым

English biologist (1911–2004)

Norman George Heatley OBE (10January 19115January 2004) was an English biologist and biochemist. He was a member of the team of Oxford University scientists who developed penicillin. Heatley developed the back extraction technique for efficiently purifying penicillin in bulk.

He was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and as a boy was an enthusiastic sailor of a small boat on the River Deben, an experience which gave him a lifelong love of sailing. He attended school at Westbourne House in Folkestone, followed by Tonbridge School, then went on to St John's College, Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences, graduating in 1933. His doctoral research in Cambridge led to a PhD in 1936, and he then moved to the University of Oxford, where he became a fellow of Lincoln College and joined a team working under Howard Florey that included Ernst Chain.

Eventually, Heatley and Florey travelled to the United States in 1941 because they wanted to produce about one kilogram of pure penicillin, and persuaded a laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, to develop larger scale manufacturing of it. In Peoria, Heatley was assigned to work with Dr. A. J. Moyer. Moyer suggested adding corn steep liquor, a by product of starch extraction, to the growth medium. With this and other subtle changes, such as using lactose in place of glucose, they were able to push up yields of penicillin to 20 units per millilitre. But their cooperation had become one sided. Heatley noted, "Moyer had begun not telling me what he was doing." Florey returned to Oxford that September, but Heatley stayed on in Peoria until December; then for the next six months, he worked at Merck & Co. in Rahway, New Jersey. In July 1942, he returned to Oxford and was soon to learn why Moyer had become so secretive. When he published their research results, he omitted Heatley's name from the paper, despite an original contract which stipulated that any publications should be jointly authored. Fifty years on, Heatley confessed that he was amused, rather than upset, by Moyer's duplicity. Later he was to learn that financial greed had led Moyer to claim all the credit for himself. To have acknowledged Heatley's part of the work would have made it difficult to apply for patents, as he did, with himself as sole inventor. In 1978, he received an OBE. He was cremated in a cardboard coffin after a funeral service at St Nicholas's Church, Marston, on 15 January 2004. Heatley was survived by his wife, Mercy, and four children, Rose, Chris, Jonathan and Tamsin.