Walker, John Ernest (1941-…), a British biochemist, shared half the 1997 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Paul Boyer of the United States for their pioneering work on the process of energy production in living cells (see Boyer, Paul Delos ). The other half of the 1997 prize was won by Danish biochemist Jens Skou (see Skou, Jens Christian ). Walker and Boyer explained the mechanism involved in the production of the chemical adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is essential to life and is involved in the chemical conversion of nutrients into energy that can be used by cells. See Cell (Producing energy) ; Respiration (Cellular respiration) .
Since the discovery of ATP in 1929, scientists have worked to understand its role in energy production and how it is formed in the cell. The basic functions of organisms, such as the beating of the heart, the contractions of muscles, and the transmission of nerve impulses, depend on ATP. In the early 1980’s, Paul Boyer first proposed a mechanism for the formation of ATP involving an enzyme (a substance that speeds up biochemical reactions) called ATP synthase. Walker and his team at the Medical Research Council (MRC) in Cambridge, England, spent 16 years analyzing the structure of this enzyme using chemical methods and advanced techniques involving X rays (see X rays ). Walker published his results in 1994, providing a molecular basis for Boyer’s theoretical work. Scientists believe that this new knowledge of the energy conversion process will improve understanding of the process of aging and a number of diseases of the nervous system.
Walker was born in Halifax, England. He studied chemistry at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, and obtained his D.Phil. from Oxford in 1969. In 1974, he joined the staff at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, London, one of the world’s foremost scientific organizations, in 1995. In 1998, he became the director of the MRC’s Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge.
