Webb was born in Dorset and educated at Poole Grammar School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied nerve gases and graduated with a first-class BA in Natural Sciences in 1942.^[1][2] He remained at Cambridge for his doctorate, where he was a Beit Fellow. There he worked in the laboratory of Malcolm Dixon, collaborating with him in the study of enzymes. Together, they wrote a classic textbook on the subject, Enzymes, which was first published by Longmans in 1958,^[3] Webb subsequently took a chair in biochemistry^[4] at the University of Queensland but continued to collaborate with Dixon on further editions.^[5][6] In 1970, he became the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Queensland and in 1975 he became the second Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University. He retired in 1986 but continued to work on the enzyme list of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) while living in Townsville.^[2]

Cambridge edit

Webb's first paper was written with Kenneth Bailey on yeast pyrophosphatase,^[7] the first of many papers on enzymes. It was followed by several papers on nerve gases, for example on British anti-lewisite with Ruth van Heyningen.^[8] Research collaboration with Malcolm Dixon began with a study of phosphotransferases,^[9] and continued with other work, both theoretical^[10] and experimental.

Queensland edit

After moving to Queensland Webb collaborated with Burt Zerner on Jack bean urease, starting with a study of its purification and assay,^[11] followed by other papers on the same enzyme. He also worked with Zerner on other enzymes, including carboxylesterases.^[12]

Nomenclature edit

Webb's interest in biochemical nomenclature started early in his career,^[13] and after the IUBMB compilation was published for the last time as a printed book^[14] he wrote a retrospective article about it.^[15]