Britton "Brit" ChanceForMemRS (July 24, 1913 – November 16, 2010) was an American biochemist, biophysicist, scholar, and inventor whose work helped develop spectroscopy as a way to diagnose medical problems.[1][2] He was "a world leader in transforming theoretical science into useful biomedical and clinical applications" and is considered "the founder of the biomedical photonics."[3][4] He received the National Medal of Science in 1974.[1]
Chance was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.[1] His parents were Eleanor Kent and Edwin Mickley Chance, president of United Engineers and Constructors, Inc, which built power plants.[6][7] His father was also a mining engineer, chemist, and inventor who held a number of metallurgical patents and created a device that detected carbon monoxide in coal mines using a chemical reaction.[8][9][10][6] Chance's paternal grandfather, Henry Martyn Chance, was a noted geologist and mining engineer who also had a medical degree.[11]
He graduated from the Haverford School in 1931.[10] He attended the University of Pennsylvania where he received a bachelor's degree in physical chemistry in 1935, and a M.A. in microbiology in 1936.[1][14][9] While at Penn, he was a member of St. Anthony Hall and of the professional and scientific honorary societies Alpha Chi Sigma, Sigma Tau, and Tau Beta Pi.[14][17] He was also the business manager of The Pennsylvania Triangle, the student newspaper.[18] As a graduate student he developed a microflow version of a stopped-flow apparatus.[14]
Around the time he was 17, he invented an auto-steering device for ships, receiving a patent in 1937.[1][9][16] He tested the device on a trip to the West Indies using his father's yacht in 1935.[10] In March 1938, the General Electric Company[19] hired him to test the auto-steering device on a round trip from England to Australia on the MS New Zealand Star, a 20,000-ton refrigerator ship.[9][10][15] In return, the company paid his tuition to Cambridge University.[20]
In 1938, Chance enrolled in Cambridge University.[20] He came back to the United States to visit his parents but was unable to return to Cambridge and England because of World War II.[20] He returned to the University of Pennsylvania and received a Ph.D degree in physical chemistry in 1940.[14][20]
In 1943, he received a second Ph.D. from Cambridge University in biology and physiology, followed by a D.Sc. from Cambridge in 1952.[1][13][20]
In 1941, Chance became an assistant professor of biophysics and physical biochemistry in the school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.[14] During World War II, he worked for the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which was working on the development of radar. He became a member of the Steering Committee and head of the Precision Circuits Section, supervising some 300 physicists.[9][15] They developed radar technology that allowed blimps to spot German submarines, as well as a “ground position indicator” to allow more accurate bombing.[1][10] He also developed analog electronic computers to calculate non-linear processes and helped develop ENIAC, of the world's first general-purpose computer.[4]
In 1949, he became a professor of biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and was appointed the second director of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation for Research in Medical Physics, a position he held until 1983.[14][1] He was then appointed E. R. Johnson Professor of Biophysics and Physical Biochemistry (later renamed as Biochemistry and Biophysics) in 1964 and university professor in 1977.[14]
Early in his career, Chance worked on enzyme structure and function, developing methods to study the pre-steady-state phase of reactions.[21][22][23] He invented the now standard stopped-flow device to measure the existence of the enzyme-substrate complex in enzyme reaction.[24]
He is considered the founder of biomedical photonics, which is now a research field covering biology, medicine, and physics.[4] Starting in the late 1980s, he developed various near-infrared spectroscopy and photon diffusion imaging methods.[4] He was also a pioneer in the numerical simulations of biochemical reactions and metabolic pathways.[25][26][21] In the 2000s, he developed molecular imaging beacons for cancer detection and diagnosis, predicting cancer aggressiveness in muscles, breast tissue, and the brain.[4][14][6]
Chance published about 392 articles with 28947 citations (h = 92) as of 19 May 2022. The following is a selection of his key papers:
Chance, B. and Theorell, H. "Studies on liver alcohol dehydrogenase 2. The kinetics of the compound of horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase and reduced diphosphopyridine nucleotide." Acta Chemica Scandinavica. 5 (7-8): 1127-1144 (1951)[28]
Chance, B. and Williams, G. R. "Respiratory enzymes in oxidative phosphorylation. I. Kinetics of oxygen utilization." Journal of Biological Chemistry. 217 (1) 383-393 (1955)[28]
Chance, B. and Williams, G.R. "The respiratory chain and oxidative phosphorylation." Advances in Enzymology and Related Subjects of Biochemistry. 17: 65-134 (1956)[28]
Chance, B; Ito, T. and Nishimura, M. "Studies on bacterial photophosphorylation 3. A sensitive and rapid method of determination of photophosphorylation." Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. 59 (1): 177-182 (1962)[28]
Chance, B., Boveris, A.『Mitochondrial generation of hydrogen-peroxide – General properties and effect of hyperbaric-oxygen.』Biochemical Journal. 134 (3): 707-716 (1973)[28]
Chance, B.; Sies, H. and Boveris, A. "Hydroperoxide metabolism in mammalian organs." Physiological Reviews. 59 (3): 527-605 (1979)[28]
Chance, B. and Yodh, A. "Spectroscopy and imaging with diffusing light." Physics Today. 48 (3): 34-40 (1995)[28]
The International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue established The Britton Chance Award in honor of his long-standing commitment, interest, and contributions to the science and engineering aspects of oxygen transport to tissue and to the society.[36]
Chance won many sailing championships through the Barnegat Bay Yacht Racing Association from the late 1930s to the 1950s, including coming in first place for Class E Sloops in the first-ever Barnegat Bay Regatta in 1938.[12][38] In the 1950s and 1960s, he competed in the United States Olympic sailing trials and also chaired the national governing body of sailing.[10][12] In March 1952, he won the Giovannelli Cup with his sailboat Complex in a regatta off of Lido Dabaro, Italy.[39]
For the 1952 Summer Olympics, 5.5-meter class was a new category.[20] Chance earned a spot on the United States Olympic team for the 5.5-meter class because he was the only entry in the trials; he had a 5.5-meter craft, Complex II, custom built as soon as the new Olympic category was announced.[20] His crew consisted of friends and former crewmates from the Mantoloking Yacht Club—teenager Michael Schoettle and twins Edgar White and Sumner White.[20]
In July 1952 in Helsinki, Finland, the US team won an Olympic gold medal in the 5.5 Metre Class, with Chance serving as helmsman and captain of the Complex II.[12][10][40][6] They won three of seven races in the competition, but only won the gold because, in the seventh race, Chance blocked Norway's Peder Lunde's wind, putting him out of contention.[20] In 1955, he was elected treasurer of the United States Olympians, the organization of former Olympic athletes.[41]
In 1956, he came in first place in Bermuda, winning the Edward Prince of Wales Trophy.[42] In 1961, his team won the 5.5 Meter Class in the international Baltic Regatta sponsored by the U.S.S.R.[43] He also won the 5.5 Metre Class World Championship in 1962 in England, sailing Complex III "with superb helmsmanship and clever sailing tactics"[44][12]
Chance was inducted into the Barnegat Bay Sailing Hall of Fame in 2004.[12] In an interview he said, “I wouldn't be without sailing. That would be unendurable for me.”[12]
Chance married seventeen-year-old Jane Earle on March 4, 1938.[10] The two spent their three-month-long honeymoon on a ship bound for Australia, testing one of his inventions for British General Electric Co.[10][20]
Before divorcing, they had four children: Eleanor Chance, Britton Chance Jr., Jan Chance, and Peter Chance.[45][46][6] His daughter Jan Change O'Malley was named US Sailor of the Year (now called US Sailing's Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year) in 1969, 1970, and 1977 by US Sailing.[47] His son Britton was a naval architect who designed sailboats for the Olympics and the America's Cup.[48]
He married Lilian Streeter Lucas in November 1956. They had 4 children: Margaret Chance, Lilian Chance, Benjamin Chance, and Samuel Chance.[10] However, they also divorced.[6]
In February 2010, he married his research associate and biochemist, Shoko Nioka, Ph.D. in Taiwan in a traditional Chinese ceremony.[6][20] At the age of 97, Chance died in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in November 2010.[49][1]
^ abcDutton, P. Leslie (November 11, 2010). "Britton Chance"(PDF). Physics Today: 65–66. Archived from the original(PDF) on November 30, 2015 – via Wayback Machine.
^Chance, Britton (1940). "The accelerated flow method for rapid reactions". Journal of the Franklin Institute. 229 (6): 737–766. doi:10.1016/S0016-0032(40)90963-2.
^Chance, B., Greenstein, D. S., Higgins, J. & Yang, C. C. The mechanism of catalase action. II. Electric analog computer studies. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 37, 322–339 (1952).
^Chance, Britton and Garfinkel, David and Higgins, Joseph and Hess, Benno. Metabolic control mechanisms. V. A solution for the equations representing interaction between glycolysis and respiration in ascites tumor cells. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 235, 2726-2439 (1960)
^"Britton Chance, 1913-2010". PaulingBlog. Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center. 2010-12-16. Retrieved 2022-04-19.
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