Victor P. Whittaker

Victor P. Whittaker
Victor Percy Whittaker
Born	Victor Percy Whittaker 11 June 1919 Ainsdale, England
Died	5 July 2016 (aged 97) Cambridge, England
Fields	Neurobiochemistry and Cholinergic Transmission
Doctoral students	Thomas C. Südhof
Known for	Isolation of synaptosomes and synaptic vesicles and biochemistry of synaptic vesicles

Victor Percy Whittaker (11 June 1919 – 5 July 2016) was a British biochemist who pioneered studies on the subcellular fractionation of the brain. He did this by isolating synaptosomes and synaptic vesicles from the mammalian brain and demonstrating that synaptic vesicles store the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

Victor P. Whittaker was born in Ainsdale, Southport (England). He studied chemistry and biochemistry at Oxford University (1937–41) where he obtained his D. Phil in 1945. He continued as Departmental Demonstrator and University Demonstrator and Lecturer in Biochemistry, University of Oxford. From 1951–55 he held the position of Assistant Professor of Physiology at the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine. In 1955 he returned to England to take the position of Principal Scientific Officer (1955–59) and Senior Principal Scientific Officer (1959–66) at the Agricultural Research Council Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge. In 1966 he moved to Cambridge University as Sir William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry, and fellow of University (now Wolfson College). From 1967–71 he acted in addition as Chief Research Scientist at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Mental Retardation and was Visiting Professor at the City University of New York (1968–72). From 1973 to 1987 he was Director and Head of the Department of Neurochemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany. As an emeritus he continued research in his institute and then at the University of Mainz, Medical Faculty, before he returned to Cambridge. He died in Cambridge in July 2016 at the age of 97.