John Stanley Griffith

Beginning as an undergraduate in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1946–1949, he went on to read Part II biochemistry in 1949–1951. His research career continued in theoretical chemistry at Oxford and Cambridge, where he held a Berry-Ramsey research fellowship at King's College. He had several appointments in Britain and the US in his different disciplines. These included professorships in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Marlow Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1961.{{cite web|url=

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticlePDF/1960/TF/TF96056BA001|title=The Faraday Society|access-date=27 April 2022|work=Royal Society of Chemistry|year=1961}} He then spent time at the Department of Mathematics at UMIST in Manchester. In 1967 he was appointed to a chair in the Department of Mathematics of Bedford College, London, where his inaugural lecture was entitled "The Neural Basis of Conscious Decision".{{cite web|

url=https://cul.worldcat.org/title/neural-basis-of-conscious-decision-an-inaugural-lecture/oclc/598486566

|publisher=Bedford College, London|year=1967|access-date=27 April 2022|title=The Neural Basis of Conscious Decision: An Inaugural Lecture|first=J.S.|last=Griffith}} In 1968 he moved back to the Department of Chemistry at Bloomington.

His early work was in the inorganic chemistry of transition metal ions and ligand field theory.{{cite web |url=http://www.biochemist.org/bio/02704/0033/027040033.pdf |title=From pabulum to prions (via DNA): a tale of two Griffiths |last=Lagnado |first=John |date=August 2005 |website=The Biochemist |publisher=Biochemical Society |access-date=3 July 2018 |quote=his first book, The Theory of Transition-Metal Ions, which had a lasting impact on inorganic chemistry and is arguably the definitive work in this field.}}

During the 1960s, Griffith and radiation biologist Tikvah Alper developed the hypothesis that some transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are caused by an infectious agent consisting solely of proteins.{{cite journal | vauthors = Alper T, Cramp WA, Haig DA, Clarke MC | title = Does the agent of scrapie replicate without nucleic acid? | journal = Nature | volume = 214 | issue = 5090 | pages = 764–6 | date = May 1967 | pmid = 4963878 | doi = 10.1038/214764a0 | bibcode = 1967Natur.214..764A | s2cid = 4195902 }}{{cite journal | vauthors = Griffith JS | title = Self-replication and scrapie | journal = Nature | volume = 215 | issue = 5105 | pages = 1043–4 | date = Sep 1967 | pmid = 4964084 | doi = 10.1038/2151043a0 | bibcode = 1967Natur.215.1043G | s2cid = 4171947 }} This idea was eventually developed by Prusiner and others into the so-called prion hypothesis. In 1951, when he was just 23, at Francis Crick's suggestion, Griffith performed quantum mechanical calculations on what later became known as complementary base pairing.{{cite journal | author = John Lagnado | title = From pabulum to prions (via DNA): a tale of two Griffiths | journal = The Biochemist | pages = 33–35 | date = August 2005 |url=http://www.biochemist.org/bio/02704/0033/027040033.pdf}}

Griffith has published several books, including "The Theory of Transition-Metal Ions" (1961),{{cite journal |last1=Roberts |first1=Louis D. |title=Book Review: The Theory of the Transition-Metal Ions (by J.S.Griffith) |journal=Physics Today |date=October 1962 |volume=15 |issue=10 |page=70 |doi=10.1063/1.3057810 |url=https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3057810 |access-date=13 May 2022}} "The Irreducible Tensor Method for Molecular Symmetry Groups" (1962), and "Mathematical Neurobiology: An Introduction to the Mathematics of the Nervous System" (1971).

• Tikvah Alper
• Stanley B. Prusiner
• prion
• transmissible spongiform encephalopathies

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Category:1928 births

Category:1972 deaths

Category:British chemists

Category:British biophysicists

Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge

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