# Athel Cornish-Bowden

Athel Cornish-Bowden (born 3 April 1943) is a British biochemist known for his numerous textbooks, particularly those on enzyme kinetics and his work on metabolic control analysis.

## Education and career

Athel Cornish-Bowden worked on pepsin catalysis. This began a life long pursuit of work on enzyme catalysis and in later years work on the control of metabolism. More recently he has also turned his attention to work related to the origin and nature of life.
He obtained his D.Phil. at Oxford with Jeremy R. Knowles, and carried out post-doctoral work with Daniel E. Koshland Jr.

## Research

Cornish-Bowden has authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers and nine textbooks on topics related to enzyme kinetics, mathematics and historical perspectives in science. According to Google Scholar, the textbook, Fundamentals of enzyme kinetics, has been cited over 3000 times by secondary sources.
Cornish-Bowden's research can be divided into three primary areas: Enzyme kinetics, metabolic control, done mainly in collaboration with Jannie Hofmeyr, and the origin of life. The following lists some of the topics and selected references to the work carried out and published by Cornish-Bowden:
* Mechanisms of Pepsin Catalysis
* Binding of ligands to Proteins
* Kinetics of nitrite reductase
* Kinetics of nitrate reductase
* The evolution of macromolecules
* Properties of multienzyme systems
* The theory of self-organizing systems
Additionally, Cornish-Bowden has published a number of history of science papers commemorating the lives and achievements of historical figures in enzymology. His current interests include the definition of life and the capacity for life to self-organize.

### Major research contributions

Cornish-Bowden is most well known for his introduction of the direct-linear plot for estimating enzyme parameters, his work on Hexokinase evolution and kinetics, and his insight into the control and regulation of metabolism.

## Editorial and related work

Cornish-Bowden has participated on the editorial boards of various journals (the Biochemical Journal, the Journal of Theoretical Biology, FEBS Journal, BioSystems), and has been active on International Committees. He was secretary of the IUPAC-IUBMB Joint Committee on Biochemical Nomenclature and in that capacity convened the committee that prepared the current IUBMB recommendations on enzyme kinetics. He also contributed to recommendations on biochemical thermodynamics, and to proposals for system representation of biochemical networks.

## Books

* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (1976). Principles of Enzyme Kinetics. London: Butterworths. ISBN 0408707216.
* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (1979). Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics. London: Butterworths.
* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (1996). Analysis of Enzyme Kinetic Datas (4 ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854877-X.
* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (1999). Basic Mathematics for Biochemists (2 ed.). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854877-X.
* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (2016). Biochemical Evolution: the Pursuit of Perfection (2 ed.). Garland Science. ISBN 978-0-8153-4552-7.

### Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics

* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (1995). Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics (2 ed.). London: Portland Press. ISBN 1-85578-072-0.
* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (2004). Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics (3 ed.). London: Portland Press. ISBN 0408707216.
* Cornish-Bowden, Athel (2012). Fundamentals of Enzyme Kinetics (4 ed.). Weinheim: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9783527330744.