Ian Michael Glynn. 3 June 1928—7 July 2022

Abstract

In the mid 1950s the convergence of crucial discoveries on nerve and muscle physiology brought to centre stage the question of how sodium and potassium concentration gradients needed for nerve conduction and muscle contraction are maintained. This was the subject Ian Glynn set out to investigate when he returned to Cambridge as a Trinity College graduate student in 1953. His initial results on the sodium and potassium permeabilities of the human red blood cell membrane, published in 1956–1967, established these cells as an ideal experimental system for studying the transport properties of the ‘sodium pump’ because of the ease with which the ionic composition of intra- and extracellular environments could be controlled, cell metabolism managed and ionic fluxes measured using isotopes. This work was followed by ground-breaking contributions from his research group over the next decades in a long series of brilliantly designed experiments, setting the foundations of our current understanding of the molecular mechanism of the sodium/potassium pump. Ian became a Trinity College fellow in 1960, advanced rapidly to a professorship in the Department of Physiology after being elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1970, and was appointed head of department in 1986 until his retirement in 1995.