Norman Pirie

Norman Wingate Pirie FRS (1 July 1907 – 29 March 1997), was a British biochemist and virologist who, along with Frederick Bawden, discovered that a virus can be crystallized by isolating tomato bushy stunt virus in 1936. This was an important milestone in understanding DNA and RNA.

Early and personal life

Pirie was born in Easebourne, near Midhurst in West Sussex, the youngest of three children of Sir George Pirie, a Scottish painter, and his wife while they were on a visit to England. He was raised near Torrance, East Dunbartonshire. He developed a stammer, and was educated by private tutors and then spent periods at Kelvinside Academy in Glasgow, Harriston School near Dumfries, and Hastings Grammar School, and then from 1921 to 1925 at Rydal School in Colwyn Bay. He studied natural sciences (biochemistry) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1925 to 1929, and became a demonstrator after graduating.

He married fellow biochemist Antoinette Patey in 1931. They had a son and a daughter. Like his wife, he was an atheist, and was concerned about nuclear weapons. He served as chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) scientific committee for several years. His wife died in 1991. He died in Harpenden in 1997, survived by his two children. During the Second World War, Pirie investigated the possibility of extracting edible proteins from leaves. Experiments on extracting edible leaf proteins continued into the 1970s.

Publications Pirie was the author of over 200 scientific publications and book chapters. He continued to publish well into his retirement. His publications include:

Pirie, N. W. 1994. The bulk extraction and quality of leaf protein in: Linskens, H-F. and Jackson, J. F. (ed.) Modern methods of plant analysis: vegetables and vegetable products Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

Pirie, N. W. 1987. An economical unit for pressing juice from fibrous pulps. Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research 38 pp. 217-222.

Pirie, N. W. 1983. New foods - proving leaf proteins worth. Nature 301 (5895) pp. 20-20.

Pirie, N. W. 1969. The production and use of leaf protein. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 28 (1) pp. 85-91.

Bawden, F. C. and Pirie, N. W. 1959. The infectivity and inactivation of nucleic acid preparations from tobacco mosaic virus. Journal of General Microbiology 21 (2) pp. 438-456.

Bawden, F. C. and Pirie, N. W. 1943. Methods for the purification of tomato bushy stunt and tobacco mosaic viruses. Biochemical Journal 37 (1) pp. 66-70.

Bawden, F. C., Pirie, N. W., Bernal, J. D. and Fankuchen, I. 1936. Liquid crystalline substances from virus-infected plants. Nature. 138 pp. 1051-1052