Page 70 - Altrobiografie

than expected-. However, perhaps I had not yet overcome my upbringing when "not bad" was the highest form of praise.
Yours was the first thesis from my laboratory that gave attention to the Mitchell chemiosmotic theory, not surprisingly since Mitchell's first paper on this theory appeared probably while you were writing your work.
However, since your t h e s i s was in Dutch, I doubt if anyone outside our laboratory profited from your clear description of this theory and the way in which it differs from the then conventional chemical hypothesis, - The main results from your studies on the mechanism of uncoupling were reported in English in the scientific literature. However, to quote a recent comment on this work:
CoenHemker,inworkthat,inmyopinion,didnotgetthe recognition that it deserved, undertook a systematic study of the effect of lipid solubility and pK on the uncoupling activity, measured by the stimulation of the latent ATPase in mitochondria of a homologous series of 6- dinitro-4-alkylphenols. He concluded that. the uncoupling activity is directly determined, not by the amount of phenol added to the medium, but by the amount dissolved in the mitochondrial lipid.
When you returned to the laboratory after a short sojourn in van Creveld's clinic, you were wise enough to move away from mitochondria and oxidative phosphorylation i n t o t h e f i e l d of blood coagulation, which I always found muchmorecomplicatedthanoxidative phospborylation. (Surely van Creveld must have pointed you in this direction). For this reason, I could not follow the progress of your work as closely as those of my o t h e r students who became professors, but I heard from others, more able to judge, just how important your work was.
I was very glad when Jan Rosing, one of my bright students from the early I970s, joined you in Maastricht.
You are in Many respects unique among My students who have become Professor. First, your field of research lies further from that of the Amsterdam Laboratory; secondly, you
are the only one who 'has be-com rector, for which my
commiserations; thirdly, you are the only one who has combined a chair with running a restaurant and you probably have the best knowledge of French wines; fourthly, you and Piet Borst are the only ones who have become MembersoftheRoyal Netherlands Academy of science 4; fifthly, you are the only one who has asked me till contribute to an altrobiography.
I could, of course, go on. Everyone is unique. Perhaps, Coen, you are more unique than others. Bill Slater
1 I recall now my participation in the Brenninkmeijer Commissie when we made the first appointments to a physically non- existing university.
2 An Australian Biochemist in Four Countries, E.C. Slater, in G.Semenza and R.Jaenike (eds), Selected Topics in the History of Biochemistry: Personal Recollections, V. Comprehensive Biochemistry, Vol.40. 1997, Elsevier, pp69-203
3 Ref. 2, pp. 112-3
4 Both in the Medicine Section, although I consider you both as biochemists and that you booth, should bein the Section of Biochemistry and Biophysics.
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