THOMAS A. SPENCER
New Hampshire Professorof Chemistry
A sense of awe at the wonders of nature pervades the thinking of Thomas Spencer as he talks about his research as an organic chemist at Dartmouth. "It is both fascinating and staggering," he says, "to contemplate all the chemistry going on in us all the time. We are walking, talking bundles of chemical activity."
For the past 15 years - ever since he joined the Dartmouth faculty as an instructor with a newly-minted Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin - the research scientist in him has been patiently working to approximate in the laboratory some of the functions achieved by nature in living systems. Spencer is concentrating his research on trying to understand specific chemical reactions within segments of certain biochemically important molecules, such as steroids, and on their simulation in model systems. This search for clues to life processes at the most basic level will prove helpful, he hopes, to the biochemist and biologist dealing with living organisms as entities.
Among the puzzles which he seeks to un- lock is the means by which enzymes, the complex proteins which are produced by living cells and which serve as essential catalysts of specific biochemical 'reactions at body temperature, do their job. How, he asks, do enzymes work with such speed, with such awesome precision and selectivity, in the "arena" of living tissue?
The chemist still has to rely largely on such crude means as external heat, still using the Bunsen burner, a relic of the 19th century, or acid even to begin to ap- proximate the facility with which enzymes bring about biochemical change. The speed of reaction achieved by enzymes in nature is often ten billion times faster than the same conversion under comparable conditions in the laboratory.
What tantalizes scientists like Spencer is the realization that an appropriately constructed laboratory molecule might act like a "natural" enzyme. He highlights the potential by pointing out how the significant biochemical molecules like enzymes have evolved over the past three to three and a half billion years since life began on this planet. From simple, rudimentary structures of three atoms have evolved complex, sophisticated systems of many thousands of atoms strung together in long serpentine molecules containing within themselves incredibly complex, delicate action codes.
To try to get handles of understanding of these long molecules, scientists have constructed weird and wonderful models resembling coiled and squirming snakes, chains of giant metal jacks, or sometimes clusters of buttons and discs, which often hang like mobiles from classroom ceilings or are encased in plastic suggestive of modern sculpture.
It's an arcane and esoteric world, which has evolved its own language of structural formulae incomprehensible to the layman. This characteristic is frustrating for students and demanding for teachers of organic chemistry for it means that the teacher must teach and the student must learn a great deal of difficult, precise material before he is caught up in the excitement of the discipline. But the effort to achieve the breakthrough to understanding is also rewarding. This is unabashedly evident when one, even if only half comprehending, listens to the eagerness and the excitement that comes through when Spencer talks of his own fascination with trying to understand the factors enabling complex molecular systems to work their mysterious ways.
It is not easy work. Spencer stresses that it took about ten years to develop a useful model in order to comprehend how one enzymic reaction worked. Yet each year brings researchers closer to the possibility of breakthroughs, such as the development of a synthetic catalyst which would be as effective or more effective than the products of evolution.
In his research, Spencer, who at Amherst pitched varsity baseball while earning academic honors, had almost from his first day at Dartmouth both recognition and support. Early on in his Dartmouth career, he was nominated for a research grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in a program with an objective "to select relatively young faculty members having unusual potential for creative thinking in the areas of basic physical sciences and then to make unencumbered funds available for their researches. In short, we are supporting 'people' rather than 'projects.'"
There have been several more research grants, the most recent one coming from the National Science Foundation to continue for three years his research modeling of certain types of enzymes.
But research accounts for actually less than half of Spencer's professional life. A teacher who likes to teach, he has earned a reputation as a careful, precise guide of chemistry majors and pre-meds into the labyrinth of advanced chemistry. In this context, he says, one of the great assets of teaching at Dartmouth "is the superior quality of the students."
The New Hampshire Professorship of Chemistry was established in 1888, in part from gifts from "persons of means" within the Granite State; in part from 19th century alumni moved to recompense the College for scholarship aid they had received as students; and, in significant part, from the $20,000 bequest of Henry Winkley. A successful Philadelphia crockery merchant who never went to college but who was born in New Hampshire, Winkley concentrated his benefactions on Dartmouth. He earlier had contributed to the endowment funds establishing the Winkley Professorship of Anglo-Saxon Languages and Literature and the Daniel Webster Professorship.
