Britton Chance

Britton Chance ForMemRS (July 24, 1913 – November 16, 2010) was the Eldridge Reeves Johnson University Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Biophysics, as well as Professor Emeritus of Physical Chemistry and Radiological Physics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

At the 1952 Summer Olympics, Chance won a gold medal in sailing.

Chance was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. (1935), M.A. (1936), and Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry (1940) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall.

Chance earned a second Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 1942 in Biology/Physiology.

During World War II, Chance worked for the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which was working on the development of radar. In 1952, he received his D.Sc. from Cambridge.

His research interests were diverse. He was promoted as the professor of biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and appointed the second director of the Johnson Foundation, a position he held until 1983. 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.

In his early career, he was mainly working on enzyme structure and function. He had invented the now standard stopped-flow device to measure the existence of the enzyme-substrate complex in enzyme reaction. He was a pioneer in the numerical simulations of biochemical reactions and metabolic pathways.

In later years, while retaining his interest in those fields, he also focused on metabolic control phenomena in living tissues as studied by noninvasive technique such as phosphorus NMR and optical spectroscopy and fluorometry, including the use of infrared light to characterize the properties of various tissues and breast tumors.

Olympic

He won a gold medal for the United States at the 1952 Summer Olympics in the 5½ Meter Class, alongside Edgar White and Sumner White.

Chance joined the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1952. He received the National Medal of Science in 1974. He was also previously elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Medical Sciences, in 1968, as well as a foreign member of the Royal Society (London) in 1981. In 1971 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He died in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in November 2010.

• MDs from: Karolinska Institute (in 1962), University of Düsseldorf (1991), University of Buenos Aires (1993), University of Copenhagen (1995), Universita Degli Studi Di Roma "Tor Vergata" (1997).
• D.Sc. degrees from:Medical College of Ohio at Toledo in 1974, Semmelweis University in 1976, Hahnemann Medical College in 1977, University of Pennsylvania in 1985, University of Helsinki in 1990. He was also made an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Academic awards

• Paul-Lewis Award in Enzyme Chemistry, 1950
• John Price Wetherill Medal, 1966
• Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Medicine, College of Physicians, USA, 1987
• Biological physics award of the American Physical Society, 1987
• Gold Medal, Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, USA, 1988
• John Scott Award of the City of Philadelphia, 1992
• SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering Fellow, 2007
• APS - American Physical Society - Fellow, 2007
• Molecular Imaging Achievement Award from the Society for Molecular Imaging, USA, 2008
• ICAS Distinguished Fellow
• ICAS Liberty Award Recipient

Awards named after Britton Chance

• The International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue (ISOTT) established The Britton Chance Award in honor of Professor Chance's long-standing commitment, interest and contributions to the science and engineering aspects of oxygen transport to tissue and to the society.This award was first presented in 2004 during the annual conference of ISOTT in Bari, Italy.
• SPIE has established Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award, honoring his significant contribution to biomedical optics. The award will be presented annually to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of biomedical optics through the development of innovative, high-impact biophotonic technologies. In particular, the award will acknowledge pioneering contributions to biophotonic methods and devices that have significant promise to accelerate or have already facilitated new discoveries in biology or medicine, and will target achievements that span disciplines and may include elements of basic research, technology development, and clinical translation.