Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (1900-1995) was born in London on 9 December 1900. He was educated at Oundle School, 1914-1918, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1918-1922, where he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos, specialising in physiology, with biochemistry as a subsidiary subject. He proceeded to postgraduate research in the Cambridge Biochemistry Department under Frederick Gowland Hopkins. Needham held a Benn Levy Studentship, 1922-1924, studying the biochemistry of inositol. In 1924 he was elected a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, and in 1928 became University Demonstrator in Biochemistry. In 1933 he succeeded J.B.S. Halbane as Sir William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry. He held the post until 1966, when he became Master of Gonville and Caius College, a position he held until his retirement in 1976.

Needham's early biochemical research focused on embryology, which he described in his book, Chemical embryology (1931). He proceeded to research various aspects of morphology, which culminated in Biochemistry and morphogenesis (1942). Needham produced three other major books on biochemistry, as well as numerous scientific papers. He was also an important figure in the development of biochemistry in Cambridge. He was a founder member of the History of Science Lectures Committee in 1936, which set up a programme of lectures on the history of science, and served on other scientific committees and councils. Needham also wrote many articles on religious, political and philosophical subjects, and gave many lectures on these subjects, as well as on biochemistry.

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