Alexander George Ogston FAA FRS[1] (30 January 1911 – 29 June 1996) was a British biochemist who specialised in the thermodynamics of biological systems.
In that capacity he had a major influence on other distinguished scientists, such as the Nobel prizewinner Oliver Smithies, who wrote his first paper[3] with him, and Richard Dawkins, who chose to study zoology on his recommendation.
[4] In 1959 he took up an appointment as Professor of Physical Biochemistry at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, where he remained until 1970, when he returned to Oxford as President of Trinity College.
[8] More generally, he worked on the use of physico-chemical methods to study the size, weight and structure of molecules, such as ultracentrifugation,[9] which he applied to insulin, for example,[10] and electrophoresis.
Thus a chiral enzyme such as aconitase[20] can act differently on two apparently equivalent groups on a prochiral molecule, so citrate can be an intermediate in the tricarboxylate cycle.