American Philosophical Society receives the papers of Britton Chance

The Library of the American Philosophical Society has received the papers of Britton Chance (1913-2010), the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Emeritus Professor of Biophysics, Physical Chemistry, and Radiologic Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Chance was a world leader in transforming theoretical science into useful biomedical and clinical applications. He developed dozens of devices for use in biomedical research, making or facilitating the making of many important discoveries. Among the most notable was the development of a microflow version of a stop-flow apparatus to study enzyme mechanisms, observing their changing compositions in milliseconds, with which he demonstrated the long-predicted but never-seen enzyme-substrate complex. Prof. Chance was also an accomplished, life-long sailor, winner of Olympic Gold in sailing in 1952. The Chance Papers cover his entire life and includes material from his time at the Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T. during World War Two. Cataloging of the Chance Papers is scheduled to begin in September 2013.