John Alfred Valentine Butler

Biography

John Alfred Valentine Butler (known to his friends and colleagues as J. A. V.) was born into a Cotswolds farming family in Winchcombe on 14 February 1899; he was the eldest of three children of Alfred and Mary Ann (née Powell). After attending the local primary school he won a scholarship which covered the travelling expenses and fees for Cheltenham Grammar School. Coming from a non-academic family he had no encouragement to go to university, and so took a short apprenticeship with a local pharmacist. This led to his being drafted into the RAMC towards the end of World War I: after training, he was posted to a field hospital near Ypres. Here, he had the chance for self study, with the help of books on loan from Lewis's Lending Library in London, and the University Correspondence College, Cambridge. Butler was demobilised in October 1919 and enrolled at University of Birmingham, from where he graduated "BSc with 1st Class Honours in 1921 (1st in the year)." He continued in that role until 1944, when Edinburgh asked him to return to teaching there. But he did not find the conditions "at all congenial", and so he secured an appointment in 1946 at the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry under Professor (later Sir) Charles Dodds, where he worked on the proteolytic degradation of insulin. This work was not altogether successful, in part because of the great strides made by Sanger. So, in 1949, Butler moved to the Chester Beatty Research Institute in Chelsea, directed by Alexander Haddow. There were two main themes to his work at the Chester Beatty, one of which – on the proteins associated with DNA in the structure of chromosomes, the histones – is especially associated with Butler. Like the Fosses, the Butlers often entertained guests there.

In 1956 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Works The Chemical Elements and their Compounds (Macmillan, 1927) The Fundamentals of Chemical Thermodynamics (Macmillan, 1928) Man is a Microcosm (The Scientific Book Club, UK, 1950) Electrical Phenomena at Interfaces, in Chemistry, Physics and Biology (Methuen, 1951) Inside the Living Cell - some Secrets of Life (The Scientific Book Club, UK, 1957) Science and Human Life: Successes and Limitations (Pergamon, 1957) Gene Control in the Living Cell (Allen & Unwin, 1968) The Life Process (Allen & Unwin, 1970) Modern Biology and Its Human Implications (Hodder and Stoughton, 1976)