SYMPOSIUM ON ELECTRON TRANSPORT IN THE METABOLISM OF MICROORGANISMS

W. MANSFIELD CLARK knowledge of cell metabolism, I still think it well to review from time to time the gross perspective This symposium is held in honor of the late Dr. that Dr. Cohen provided. Because of the reBarnett Cohen. Dr. Cohen was devoted to this stricted field of this symposium, I shall not Society. He served repeatedly on its committees attempt to review Dr. Cohen's other contribuand the Council. He helped frame the present tions. constitution. As archivist he gathered and Barney and I lived through some interesting preserved records of bacteriology in America, periods in biochemistry, and if you will bear with and he wrote Chronicles of the Society of American me for a moment, I should like to comment Bacteriologists, 1899-1960. He was the first, and briefly on one series of changes in point of view. for fifteen years, Editor of Bacteriological ReI am reminded of these changes by the title of views. In the jubilee year he served as President this symposium. In our not too early youth of the Society. Not the least of his services to biochemists were inclined to regard biological the Society was the incomparable geniality that oxidation as concerned with oxygen exclusively. he brought to social gatherings and "bull-sesIn his early days Warburg was so inclined. This sions." We who knew him well find it difficult to led to a historically interesting controversy with refer to Dr. Cohen otherwise than by "Barney." Wieland, who wrote of the transport of hydrogen He was a lovely character and withal a very wise as the essential feature. Much of the current man. nomenclature stems from this, and for a long It is not difficult to see why this particular time biochemists spoke only of dehydrogenation. symposium is held in his honor. During a large Today, as in the title of this symposium, biopart of the nearly one-third century that he and I chemists have fallen into the habit of speaking worked together, we published several of the of electron transport. papers in the series Studies on Oxidation-ReducWe conceive that an electric cell will not tion. These papers established order in the free operate unless the half-reaction in each half-cell energy changes pertaining to a large number of is capable of contributing electrons to and withoxidation-reduction indicators used in bacdrawing electrons from an electrode. It by no teriology. With Chambers and others, Dr. Cohen means necessarily follows that the transfer of used these indicators in establishing the gross electrons per se is essential when two oxidationperspective regarding the reducing intensity of reduction systems interact directly or via a