Arthur Harden

Harden was born on 12 October 1865 in Manchester to Albert Tyas Harden and Eliza Macalister. He was educated at a private school and at Tettenhall College, Staffordshire, and entered Owens College in the University of Manchester in 1882, graduating in 1885. In 1886 he was awarded the Dalton Scholarship in Chemistry and spent a year working with Otto Fischer at Erlangen. He returned to Manchester as lecturer and demonstrator, and remained there until 1897 when he was appointed chemist to the newly founded British Institute of Preventive Medicine, which later became the Lister Institute. In 1907 he was appointed Head of the Biochemical Department, a position which he held until his retirement in 1930 (though he continued his scientific work at the Institute after his retirement).

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At Manchester Harden had studied the action of light on mixtures of carbon dioxide and chlorine, and when he entered the Institute he applied his methods to the investigation of biological phenomena such as the chemical action of bacteria and alcoholic fermentation. He studied the breakdown products of glucose and the chemistry of the yeast cell, and produced a series of papers on the antiscorbutic and antineuritic vitamins.

Harden was knighted in 1926, and received several honorary doctorates. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he received the Davy Medal in 1935.

He was married with no children. His wife died in 1928, and Sir Arthur died at his home in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire on 17 June 1940.

References

• F. G. Hopkins; C. J. Martin (1942). "Arthur Harden. 1865-1940". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 4 (11): 2-14.