Philip Kuchel Honoured at Sydney University Festschrift

Philip Kuchel at the symposium dinner, with a framed version of the front cover of the special edition of the European Biophysics Journal that is to be published in his honour.

On 30 September 2011, over 60 colleagues, collaborators, past and present students, friends and family came together at the University of Sydney for a Festschrift symposium in honour of Professor Philip Kuchel. For over three decades, Philip was a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Sydney. He has just celebrated his 65th birthday and taken on a new role as Executive Director of the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium. A full autobiographical account of Philip’s illustrious and ongoing career can be found on pages 30-33 of the latest issue of the Australian Biochemist.

The symposium started with some reflections and reminiscences from those who have known Philip longest. Dr Dave Roberts, who was a postdoc with Professor Laurie Nichol at ANU’s John Curtin School in 1972, recalled Philip as a bright, young, clinically qualified PhD student. Together they carried out some of the very earliest computer modeling of biochemical pathways. Dave also revealed, to the audience’s amusement, that Philip’s first date with Merilyn, his wife of 40 years and mother of their four daughters, had been the result of a coin toss.

In a tribute sent from Oxford, Dr Frank Brown, with whom Philip shared a bench in the Oxford Biochemistry department when he arrived as a postdoc in 1975, recalled meeting ‘a large affable Australian’ who excelled at ‘cerebral gymnastics’. He described the excitement when they and their colleagues acquired the first 1H NMR spectra of metabolites within intact human erythrocytes, and recalled analysing their results over late-night suppers in the lab, eaten off the graph plotter.

Professor Peter Dunkley, who, along with Philip, was appointed to the newly established Medical School at the University of Newcastle in 1978, recalled the camaraderie of these early days, and his enjoyment of wide-ranging biochemistry discussions with Philip and Geoffrey Kellerman, the Foundation Professor of Medical Biochemistry.

Professor Gerry Wake, Philip’s long-term colleague and friend from Sydney Biochemistry, sent a letter in which he recalled the decision in 1980 to appoint Philip, then just 33, to the Chair of Biochemistry. Gerry paid tribute to Philip’s leadership in the department, highlighting his remarkable research productivity, strong commitment to teaching, inspiring graduate student supervision and, in particular, his outstanding personal qualities – fairness, kindness, generosity and understanding.

The second session featured presentations from a number of those who were students or postdocs with Philip in the 1980s. Professor David Thorburn, now at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, described how Philip’s mathematical and systems biology approaches have influenced his work translating our understanding of mitochondrial DNA inheritance into approaches to guide reproductive options for families. Professor Caroline Rae, now at UNSW and Neuroscience Research Australia, reflected on how the metabolic training from Philip’s lab still colours the work she does in brain biochemistry, and she described some of her work elucidating the neurochemical bases of the psychiatric treatment transcranial direct current stimulation. Professor Sue Berners-Price, now Pro Vice Chancellor at Griffith University, described her work using NMR to investigate the mechanism of action of metal-containing anticancer drugs. Dr Jennifer Potts, now at the University of York, discussed the unusual structure and function of surface proteins from gram-positive bacteria and the implications for the formation of biofilms on prosthetic devices.

The third session focused on Philip’s collaborative links with leading scientists abroad and at home. Professor Gheorge Benga from the University of Cluj Napoca, Romania, described the history of the measurement of water transport across red cell membranes, culminating in the identification of the protein responsible, aquaporin-1. Dr Uzi Eliav from Tel Aviv University, Israel, described the potential value of NMR-based analyses of multiple quantum coherences arising from small molecules in gels. Professor Frances Separovic of the University of Melbourne described the impact of membrane lipid composition on the structural organisation of membrane proteins. Professor Peter Stilbs of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, discussed the theoretical framework in which NMR spin echo and pulse-field gradient techniques had been developed, acknowledging the seminal contributions of Philip’s group.

The final session, which focused on Philip’s current research interests, began with a talk from Professor Sir George Radda, Chairman of the Singapore Biomedical Research Council, entitled ‘Why we lured Philip to Singapore’. George provided an overview of the impressive Singapore Bioimaging Consortium as well as of the exciting advances now being made using ‘hyperpolarised carbon-13’ to study metabolism in vivo. Dr Guilhem Pages, who worked with Philip in Sydney and who has now joined him in Singapore, explained their use of hyperpolarised 13C nuclei to study metabolism in red blood cells. Given Philip’s well-known love of gadgets and fascination with metabolism, one suspects that the hyperpolarisation facility was a major factor in attracting him to Singapore. Finally, Dr Stuart Grieve, a former student and long-term collaborator, presented some interesting MR imaging analyses of patients with unusual cardiac pathologies, which left the audience in no doubt as to the folly of combining exercise with cocaine intake.

The symposium was generously sponsored by ASBMB and the University of Sydney. It was followed by a dinner in Philip’s honour, sponsored by Bruker Australia. A number of people spoke, but none more memorably than Philip who suggested that scientists should adopt the philosophy espoused by Marilyn Monroe: ‘I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful’'

A selection of photographs from the event can be viewed here:


Reprinted with permission from the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Magazine