Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has been very busy these days with his new administrative responsibilities.

Despite all the new duties filling up his schedule, however, the Houghton professor of chemistry and biochemistry still finds time to work in his lab every Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday.

But when Knowles moved out of his Mallinckrodt lab to the dean's office in University Hall this summer, he made a decision to give up his research as soon as his graduate students conclude their studies.

Understandably, it is a difficult transition for Knowles, since for the last 30 years, the work he contributed to the understanding of how enzymes operate was one of the most important and most enjoyable parts of his career, he says.

A 'Surgical' Approach

Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry Elias J. Corey, the winner of last year's Nobel Prize for chemistry, calls Knowles the "world's most influential bio-organic chemist."

Corey says that Knowles's approach to research has been "surgical" and characterized by very deliberate experiments and deliberate discoveries.

"He has a rational, logical, mathematical approach to research," Corey says. "It is more than a fishing expedition. Jeremy does not make accidental discoveries."

Knowles's most influential and well known research has dealt with the processes involved in enzyme reactions.

"His most important discoveries add up together to a more in-depth understanding about how enzymes work," Corey says.

Knowles's research has illuminated how enzymes accelerate chemical reactions efficiently. During the early 1970s, Knowles and his group of researchers began to look at the mechanisms involved in enzyme activity.

Knowles's work at that time led to the first complete description of what took place in the enzyme-catalyzed reaction.

In his experiment, Knowles developed a theory of "enzymatic perfection." The biochemist showed that certain enzymes' evolutionary development had reached their most advanced stage.

Knowles was the first person to show that enzymes could reach a maximum possible efficiency and could come to a point where it would be impossible to speed biochemical processes any further.

"This was the first time someone had come up with the concept that enzymes could reach maximum efficiency," says Frank H. Westheimer, Loeb professor of chemistry, emeritus.