John E. Walker

Walker married Christina Westcott in 1963. The couple is blessed with two daughters, Esther and Miriam.

John E Walker was born on January 7, 1941 in Halifax, England to Thomas Ernest Walker and Elsie Lawton. His father was a stonemason while his mother was an amateur musician. He had two younger sisters.

He gained his early education from Rastrick Grammar School, where he specialized in physical science and mathematics in his last three years. While at school, he captained school’s soccer and cricket teams.

Following his preliminary studies, he enrolled at the St Catherine’s College, Oxford in 1960. Four years later, he gained his Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry.

In 1965, John Walker began his research on peptide antibiotics with EP Abraham at Sir Willian Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford. Four years later, he was awarded D Phil degree in the subject.

While researching on peptide antibiotics, Walker keenly followed John Kendrew’s hosted television programmes that publicized the remarkable developments made in the field of molecular biology during the 1950s and early 1960s. The details of the research in the field were later published in the book ‘The Thread of Life’ in 1966.

Deeply influenced by Kendrew’s television show and the book, he went on to broaden his knowledge and understanding of molecular biology. He did this by reading books, including JD Watson’s ‘Molecular Biology of the Gene’ and William Hayes’ ‘Bacterial Genetics’. He also briefed himself in the subject by attending lectures of David Phillips, professor of molecular biology in Oxford, on protein structure and Henry Harris, professor of pathology, on nucleus and cytoplasm.

Walker studied abroad for five years. From 1969 to 1971, he studied at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin and later from 1971 to 1974, in France. He was supported by fellowships from NATO and EMBO, first at the CNRS at Gif-sur-Yvette and then at the Institut Pasteur.

In 1974, Walker attended a research workshop in Cambridge titled ‘Sequence Analysis of Proteins’. The workshop was jointly organized by Ieuan Harris from the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) and by Richard Perham from the Cambridge University Department of Biochemistry. It was at the workshop that Walker first met Fred Sanger.

John Walker’s most important contribution came during the latter half of the 1970s when he started applying protein chemical methods to membrane proteins. He next began the structural study of the ATP synthase from bovine heart mitochondria and from eubacteria. It was this study that gave new insights into how ATP is made in the biological world. His work supported the binding change mechanism and rotary catalysis for the ATP synthase, one of the catalytic mechanisms. Together with Paul Boyer, Walker elucidated the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate.