Gary Keith Ackers (1939 - 2011) was Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics of

Washington University School of Medicine Washington University School of Medicine (WashU Medicine) is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, located in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1891, the School of Medicine shares a ca ...

. His research focused on thermodynamic linkage analysis of biological

macromolecule A macromolecule is a "molecule of high relative molecular mass, the structure of which essentially comprises the multiple repetition of units derived, actually or conceptually, from molecules of low relative molecular mass." Polymers are physi ...

s, addressing the molecular mechanism of cooperative O₂ binding to human

hemoglobin Hemoglobin (haemoglobin, Hb or Hgb) is a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells. Almost all vertebrates contain hemoglobin, with the sole exception of the fish family Channichthyidae. Hemoglobin ...

since the early 1970s. He was a Fellow of the

Biophysical Society The Biophysical Society is an international scientific society whose purpose is to lead the development and dissemination of knowledge in biophysics. Founded in 1958, the Society currently consists of over 7,000 members in academia, government, an ...

and one of the founders of the annual Gibbs Conference.Gary Ackers
faculty page at Washington University in St. Louis. Accessed on 2010-02-01. Ackers invented agarose gel chromatography when he was a teenager. He went on the develop analytical gel chromatography methods for determinations of many important characteristics of water-soluble proteins; diffusion coefficient, molecular size, thermodynamics of protein-protein interactions including important changes due to single amino acid substitutions.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ackers, Gary Keith 1939 births 2011 deaths 20th-century American biochemists Scientists from Missouri Washington University School of Medicine faculty