Charles Nicholas Hales facts for kids

Charles Nicholas "Nick" Hales (1935–2005) was an English doctor and scientist. He was a professor who studied how the body works, especially focusing on diabetes. He made many important discoveries about this condition.

About Nick Hales

Nick Hales went to school at King Edward VI Grammar School in Stafford. In 1953, he started studying at Trinity College, Cambridge. He earned his first degree in 1956.

He then went to University College Hospital Medical School to study medicine. He became a doctor in 1959. After working as a junior doctor, Hales returned to University of Cambridge to study biochemistry. He earned his PhD in 1964.

Measuring Insulin in the Blood

When Nick Hales began studying diabetes, it was hard to measure insulin in the blood. Insulin is a hormone that helps your body use sugar. In 1960, two scientists, Yalow and Berson, found a new way to test for it. Their method used special radioactive insulin.

Hales worked to make this test much simpler to use. He described his new method in his PhD paper. This work quickly made him known as a promising young researcher.

From 1964 to 1970, he taught biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He also treated patients with diabetes at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. In 1971, he earned a higher medical degree.

From 1970 to 1977, Hales led a department in Cardiff. Then, from 1977 until he retired in 2002, he was a professor at the University of Cambridge. He also continued to work as a doctor at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Discoveries About Insulin

In the 1980s, Hales researched how the body makes and releases insulin. He also looked at how certain proteins change inside cells.

In 1984, he spent a year working with another scientist, Dan Cook. They used a new method called "patch clamping." This allowed them to study tiny channels in cells that make insulin.

They found a new type of channel that reacts to a molecule called ATP. They quickly realized this channel was key to how insulin is released when blood sugar goes up.

When Hales returned to Cambridge, he worked with Mike Ashford. They showed that this same channel is where certain diabetes medicines work. These medicines help the body release more insulin. Their research helped create important new drugs for treating diabetes.

Diabetes and Early Life

In the late 1980s, Hales started working with David Barker, a scientist who studied diseases in large groups of people. They looked at how a baby's development before birth might affect their health later.

Hales knew that most insulin-making cells form when a baby is still growing inside its mother. He thought that if a baby didn't get enough nutrition before birth, it could cause problems later.

Working with others, he showed that babies born with a low birth weight had a much higher chance of getting diabetes later in life. This was a very important discovery.

Hales was also part of the teams that reviewed research for many science journals. He helped decide which new studies should be published. He also served on committees that gave out money for medical research.

Family Life

In 1959, Nick Hales married Janet May Moss. They had two sons, Paul and Timothy. Their marriage ended in the late 1970s. In 1978, Charles Nicholas Hales married Margaret Griffiths. They had a daughter named Kathryn.

Awards and Honours

Nick Hales received several important awards for his scientific work:

• 1992 — He became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honour for scientists in the UK.
• 1992 — He gave the Croonian Lecture, a famous speech about his research on diabetes.
• 1995 — He was awarded the Baly Medal.
• 1998 — He became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci).