Michael Berridge facts for kids

Sir Michael John Berridge (born October 22, 1938 – died February 13, 2020) was a famous British scientist. He was a physiologist, who studies how living things work, and a biochemist, who studies the chemistry of life.

Sir Michael was born and grew up in Southern Rhodesia, which is now called Zimbabwe. He became well-known for his amazing discoveries about how cells communicate. He found out that a special molecule, called inositol trisphosphate, acts like a "second messenger" inside cells. This molecule helps connect signals from outside the cell to the release of calcium inside the cell. Calcium is super important for many cell activities!

By 2009, he was an important researcher at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. He was also a professor at the University of Cambridge, teaching about cell signaling.

Early Life and Learning

Sir Michael Berridge was born in a town called Gatooma in Southern Rhodesia. He studied zoology (the study of animals) and chemistry at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury (now Harare) in 1960.

He became very interested in how insects work, thanks to his teacher, Eina Bursell. He then moved to the UK to study insects even more. He worked with a famous insect scientist, Sir Vincent Wigglesworth, at the University of Cambridge. In 1965, he earned his PhD by studying how the African cotton stainer insect gets rid of nitrogen waste.

His Scientific Journey

After finishing his studies in the UK, Sir Michael went to the USA for more research. He worked at several universities, including the University of Virginia and Case Western Reserve University, from 1965 to 1969.

In 1969, he came back to Cambridge. He worked at the University of Cambridge in a special unit that studied insect chemistry and physiology. He became a senior scientist there. From 1978 to 1990, he led a unit focused on insect nerves and how medicines affect them.

Later, in 1990, he joined the Babraham Institute. He became the head of the Molecular Signalling laboratory in 1994. He stayed in this important role until he retired in 2004. Even after retiring, he continued to be involved as the first Emeritus Babraham Fellow. In 1994, he also became an honorary professor at the University of Cambridge. He was also a fellow at Trinity College.

Awards and Special Recognitions

Sir Michael Berridge received many important awards for his scientific work. These awards showed how much his discoveries helped our understanding of biology.

Some of his major awards include:

• The William Bate Hardy Prize in 1987.
• The Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1989.
• The Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 1991.
• The Wolf Prize in Medicine in 1994/5 (shared with Yasutomi Nishizuka).
• The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine in 2005.

He also received many other honors, such as the Feldberg Prize (1984), the King Faisal International Prize for Science (1986), and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1986). He was given the title of Knight in 1998 for his great contributions to science.

Sir Michael was chosen to be a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1984. This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK. He also helped start the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998. He was a member of many other important scientific groups around the world, including the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.