Noel Carr

Dec 21 2007 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS to his core a scientist, a man of an enquiring nature and briefly a Liverpudlian, whose immense capacity for thought reached for life forms clinging to the Earth two billion years ago, while appreciating the immediate charm of a good wine.

To the lay mind, the title of his papers did not suggest curling-up on the sofa for a racy read.

But those who read, An Immunological Approach to Detect Phosphate Stress in Populations and Single Cells of Photosynthetic Picoplankton, felt better for it.

For an understanding of cyanobacteria (blue-green) is essential in our efforts to combat global warming.

Professor Noel Gordon Carr knew that. So while some people may feel that an enthusiasm for Association Football or bingo takes you to the throb of life, Carr knew that his cyanobacteria, possibly the most numerous organisms on Earth, have helped determine the food we eat and the air we breath, by drawing the energy in sunlight to split water into oxygen, the beginning of the complicated process known as “oxygenic photosynthesis”.

Although he wasn’t there in person, Carr did in a way sense the atmosphere that moved over our world when the Creation was young.

Not bad for a chap who was crippled in both legs while 14 and attending Roundhay Grammar School near his home in South Shields.

But with characteristic determination, he started walking again with the aid of two sticks, achieving what a friend would later delightfully describe as a “dizzying pace”, particularly on stairs.

From Leeds University, where he graduated in biochemistry, Carr advanced to Trinity College, Oxford, researching the metabolism of purple bacteria.

At the marine station at Stanford University, California, which had in an earlier generation inspired some of John Steinbeck’s Doc stories, Carr worked on microbial ecology in what was the most influential period of his career.

From there, in 1962, he took up an ICI Fellowship at Liverpool University’s Biochemistry Department. The following two years as a senior lecturer were very happy for Carr and old students remember with affection sessions at the pub and his wife, Di, producing generous helpings of bacon and egg at home.

He then became professor of biological sciences at Warwick University. A revered figure with white hair and a domed head, the father of four retired to Leamington Spa.

Noel Carr, biochemist, born December 3, 1935; died October 30, 2007.