Norman Wingate Pirie FRS, was a British biochemist and virologist who, along with Frederick Bawden, discovered that a virus can be crystallized by isolating tomato bushy stunt virus in 1936.
10 Facts About Norman Pirie
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Norman Pirie developed a stammer, and was educated by private tutors and then spent periods at Kelvinside Academy in Glasgow, Harriston School near Dumfries, and Hastings Grammar School, and then from 1921 to 1925 at Rydal School in Colwyn Bay.
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Norman Pirie studied natural sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from 1925 to 1929, and became a demonstrator after graduating.
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Norman Pirie served as chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament scientific committee for several years.
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Norman Pirie died in Harpenden in 1997, survived by his two children.
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Norman Pirie worked at Cambridge University until 1940, working with Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.
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Bawden moved to Rothamsted Experimental Station in Harpenden in 1936, and Norman Pirie moved to Rothamsted as a virus physiologist in 1940, becoming head of the biochemistry department from 1947 until 1973.
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Norman Pirie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1949, delivered its Leeuwenhoek Lecture in 1963 and won its Copley Medal in 1971 for his virology work.
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Norman Pirie retired in 1972, but continued work on beta carotene in leaf proteins, and the use of leaf proteins in new foods for humans.
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Norman Pirie was the author of over 200 scientific publications and book chapters.