36 Facts About Britton Chance

Britton "Brit" Chance was an American biochemist, biophysicist, scholar, and inventor whose work helped develop spectroscopy as a way to diagnose medical problems.

Britton Chance was an Olympic athlete who won a gold medal for the United States at the 1952 Summer Olympics in the 5.5 Metre Class.

Britton Chance's parents were Eleanor Kent and Edwin Mickley Chance, president of United Engineers and Constructors, Inc which built power plants.

Britton Chance's father was a mining engineer, chemist, and inventor who held a number of metallurgical patents and created a device that detected carbon monoxide in coal mines using a chemical reaction.

Britton Chance's family had a summer home in Mantoloking, New Jersey where he learned to sail on his father's yacht Antares.

Britton Chance sailed in Antilles and the Panama Canal Zone.

Britton Chance was the business manager of The Pennsylvania Triangle, the student newspaper.

Britton Chance tested the device on a trip to the West Indies using his father's yacht in 1935.

Britton Chance came back to the United States to visit his parents but was unable to return to Cambridge and England because of World War II.

Britton Chance returned to the University of Pennsylvania and received a Ph.

In 1941, Britton Chance became an assistant professor of biophysics and physical biochemistry in the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Britton Chance became a member of the Steering Committee and head of the Precision Circuits Section, supervising some 300 physicists.

Britton Chance developed analog electronic computers to calculate non-linear processes and helped develop ENIAC, of the world's first general-purpose computer.

Early in his career, Britton Chance worked on enzyme structure and function, developing methods to study the pre-steady-state phase of reactions.

Britton Chance invented the now standard stopped-flow device to measure the existence of the enzyme-substrate complex in enzyme reaction.

Britton Chance is considered the founder of biomedical photonics, which is a research field covering biology, medicine, and physics.

Britton Chance was a pioneer in the numerical simulations of biochemical reactions and metabolic pathways.

Britton Chance became an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.

Britton Chance became the president of the Medical Diagnostic Research Foundation in Philadelphia in 1995.

Britton Chance was visiting distinguished chair professor at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, from 2009 to 2010.

Britton Chance published about 392 articles with 28947 citations as of 19 May 2022.

Britton Chance was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1950.

Britton Chance became a resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1958, and served on President Dwight D Eisenhower's Science Advisory Committee from 1959 to 1960.

Britton Chance was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Medical Sciences in 1968, the Wistar Institute in 1969, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1971, the Royal Society in 1981, and The International Society for Optical Engineering in 2007.

Britton Chance was became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007, and a Fellow in Institute for Corean-American Studies.

Britton Chance was a Harvey Lecturer at the New York Academy of Medicine in 1954, a Phillips Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh in 1956 and 1965, and a Pepper Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1957.

Britton Chance was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Chemical Society, the Institute of Radio Engineers, and the Society of Biological Chemists.

Britton Chance cofounded the Biophysical Society and the Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences.

Britton Chance was vice president of the American Philosophical Society, chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics, president of the International Society of Oxygen Transport to Tissue, president for the Society for Free Radical Research International, and a board member of the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study.

Britton Chance won many sailing championships through the Barnegat Bay Yacht Racing Association from the late 1930s to the 1950s, including coming in first place for Class E Sloops in the first-ever Barnegat Bay Regatta in 1938.

Britton Chance earned a spot on the United States Olympic team for the 5.5-meter class because he was the only entry in the trials; he had a 5.5-meter craft, Complex II, custom built as soon as the new Olympic category was announced.

In July 1952 in Helsinki, Finland, the US team won an Olympic gold medal in the 5.5 Metre Class, with Britton Chance serving as helmsman and captain of the Complex II.

Britton Chance won the 5.5 Metre Class World Championship in 1962 in England, sailing Complex III "with superb helmsmanship and clever sailing tactics".

Britton Chance was inducted into the Barnegat Bay Sailing Hall of Fame in 2004.

Britton Chance's son Britton was a naval architect who designed sailboats for the Olympics and the America's Cup.

At the age of 97, Britton Chance died in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in November 2010.