Bios

Bios, a substance essential for the growth of yeast, was cracked into its parts at the University of Oregon last week. An electrical current drifting through a tank of many compartments did the splitting and neatly deposited each fraction in a separate cubicle. Since bios actuates the growth of yeast as hormones actuate the growth of animals and since bios seems closely akin to vitamins ("food hormones"), it may be that one or more of the bios fractions are common to both vitamins and hormones. That possibility has tremendous significance for biochemistry. It also has great import for Professor Roger John Williams, 37, of the University of Oregon, who performed last week's research, and for Robert R. Wil- liams, 45, chemical director of Bell Telephone Laboratories, his brother, who headed him toward the work.

The Brothers Williams were born in India, sons of a missionary. Both got their educations in the U. S. In 1918, while Robert, the elder, was working on vitamins for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Roger, while studying for his Ph. D. at the University of Chicago, won a Fleischmann Yeast fellowship. Roger asked Robert what line of research he ought to follow up.

Robert's advice was something like this: ''Wildiers of Louvain, at the begin- ning of the century found something in yeast which the yeast needed for growth. Wildiers called it bios. I'd like to follow it up. But I'm getting a job with Western Electric and shall have to work on insulations and things like that. Suppose you look into bios."

Brother Roger did, while he earned his Ph. D. and after he began teaching at the University of Oregon.

Robert, meanwhile, made time for studying bios with Professor Walter Hollis Eddy at Columbia University, apart from his industrial work. Seven years ago Robert and Professor Eddy isolated bios as a pure, crystalline substance, which dissolved in water and melted at 433.4DEG F. That made Roger's work at the University of Oregon much easier and led directly to last week's accomplishment.*

*The Williams Brothers' careers have been strikingly like those of the Brothers Cornpton-- Karl Taylor, 43, and Arthur Holly, 38. The Comptons are the sons of the theologian president-emeritus of the College of Wooster. While Karl was teaching physics and studying electro-magnetic radiations at Princeton, Arthur studied the same subject there. Upon his elder brother's advice Arthur followed a path of physics which led him to a University of Chicago professorship and a Nobel Prize. Karl became president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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