ROSSITER, ROGER JAMES

(b. Glenelg, South Australia, 24 July 1913; d. Helsinki, Finland, 21 February 1976)

biochemistry, neurochemistry, education.

Rossiter was the eldest of the four children of James Leonard Rossiter and Marguerita Jacobs. His father, a Methodist schoolmaster who held a doctorate in the arts, encouraged Roger to excel academically and athletically at private schools in Queensland and Western Australia. Rossiter received a B.Sc. in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Western Australia in 1934, and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, which he took up at Merton College, Oxford, in 1935. Before leaving Australia, he became engaged to Helen M. Randell, a medical student whom he married on 16 March 1940, just prior to her receiving a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh, They had three sons and a daughter. (Their son John, born with Down’s syndrome, was never acknowledged by Rossiter.)

At Oxford, while representing his college in rowing, rugby, and field hockey, Rossiter earned a degree with first-class honors in biochemistry and physiology (1938) and set his sights on a career in medical research. To that end he sought advanced degrees in both medicine and biochemistry, receiving in a short space of time the D.Phil. (1940), bachelor’s degrees in medicine and chirurgy (1941), and the M.A. (1942). Initially as a Harmsworth senior scholar and then as a Carnegie scholar, Rossiter did his graduate and postgraduate work with Rudolph Peters and Severo Ochoa. This work reaffirmed and fixed his love for academic research and resulted in the publication of several papers on the effects of vitamins and the thyroid hormone on tissue metabolism.

Upon completion of his medical studies, Rossiter was drawn into war-related research with the Medical Research Council Burns Unit at Oxford, where he initiated investigations into the toxic effects of tannic acid treatment and the metabolic response of tissues to burns. In 1943, shortly after his wife had joined the army as an anesthetist, Rossiter was commissioned as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He quickly brought the techniques of experimental biochemistry to bear on medical problems exacerbated by war, first with the Army Malarial Research Unit in England, then with the British Traumatic Shock Research Unit in Italy, and finally with the Army Marasmus Research Team in India. These postings resulted in a pioneering study of the biochemical response to prolonged use of the antimalarial drug mepacrine and a comprehensive survey of the nutritional problems suffered by repatriated prisoners of war. In early 1946 Rossiter returned with his wife, with whom he had been reunited in India, to Oxford as Betty Brookes Scholar in biochemistry. In 1946 he received the D.M. degree, and in 1947 he was awarded the Radcliffe Prize.

After the war universities around the world scrambled to attract scientists freed from the war effort, and Rossiter received several offers. The most persuasive of those seeking his services was G. Edward Hall, a Canadian research physiologist who was dean of medicine and later (July 1947) became president of the University of Western Ontario. Hall wanted researchers for his medical faculty, and he found a kindred spirit in Rossiter, who accepted the invitation to move to London, Ontario, as professor and head of the department of biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario. Upon his arrival there in 1947, Rossiter threw himself into his work and began to lay the foundations for an innovative, productive, and research-oriented department. Now free to pursue the biochemical problems that most fascinated him, he focused on the chemistry of the nervous system.

Rossiter’s early work helped elucidate the lipid composition of brain and peripheral nerves, as well as age-related changes during myelination. Subsequent work extended the study of myelin lipids to several animal species, with increasing emphasis on the biochemical changes associated with phosphorus-containing substances that occurred during nerve degeneration and regeneration. This work, largely carried out over the period between 1947 and 1952, yielded essential information on the lipid components of the myelin sheaths. The numerous resulting publications contributed substantially to general advances in membrane chemistry and the later construction of a molecular model for myelin.

After the completion of a hot isotope lab in 1950, Rossiter embarked on a pioneering study of the phosphorus metabolism of peripheral nerves during degeneration, and of the biosynthesis of brain lipids, using radioactively labeled phosphate as an investigative tool. These neurochemical studies proved fundamental to an emerging consensus on the mechanism of formation of glycerophosphatides and phosphoinositides.

Although neurochemical research remained at the core of Rossiter’s research program, he exploited all avenues of biochemical research when the opportunity arose. He supervised studies of the metabolism of polymorphonuclear leukocytes and reticulocytes, the endocrine responses associated with cold stress, and, while on sabbatical in his native Australia, the intermediary role of O-phosphodiesters in the formation of lombricine.

Rossiter’s accomplishments brought him national and international fame, and he received numerous awards and accolades. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1954 and in 1963 received its Flavelle Medal, as well as the WarnerChilcott Award of the Canadian Society for Clinical Chemistry, He worked diligently to promote the growth of biochemistry through his association with numerous scientific societies. He served on the editorial boards of several biochemical journals, became a member of the World Federation of Neurology’s Commission on Neurochemistry in 1960, and was the first chairman of the Council of the International Society of Neurochemistry. In Canada, Rossiter was frequently a member of the national committees of medical and biochemical societies, such as the Canadian National Committee of Biochemistry, the Advisory Committee on Medical Research for the National Research Council, and the Grants Committees for Metabolism and for Clinical Investigation of the Medical Research Council.

It was inevitable that the University of Western Ontario would draw on the talents and energy of its head of biochemistry, and in 1965 Rossiter became dean of graduate studies, a position he had been instrumental in establishing in 1947. He retained the rank of professor of biochemistry, hopeful that the administrative burden would not isolate him from research. Unfortunately it did, and after 1965 Rossiter’s contribution to science was primarily an administrative one. His tenure as dean lasted only three years, for in 1968 he took on the even more onerous position of academic vice president and provost. In 1974 he returned to medical science as vice president for health sciences, and he immediately embarked on a comprehensive study of national health care systems. While accumulating data in Europe, he died suddenly of heart failure.

In all his endeavors, Rossiter committed himself totally and unreservedly. To his students and colleagues his breadth of knowledge in science was rivaled only by his interest in all aspects of human accomplishment. Rossiter’s scientific work figures prominently in the evolution of biochemistry into the vibrant, mature discipline it is today, and his academic career exemplifies the rise of Canadian university research after World War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Rossiter’s publications numbered about 240, and specific titles can best be retrieved from such reference volumes as Index Medicus for medical topics and Chemical Abstracts for biochemical topics. The Source Index of Science Citation Index provides a ready entry on nearly all his scientific publications from 1955 on.

The most frequently cited of Rossiter’s works include “Acid and Alkaline Phosphatase in White Cells,” in Blood, 5 (1950), 267-277, written with W. F. Haight; “Alkaline and Acid Phosphatase in Cerebrospinal Fluid,” in Canadian Journal of Research, E28 (1950), 56-68, written with K. G. Colling; “Phospholipid Metabolism in Rat Liver Slices,” in Canadian Journal of Biochemistry and Physiology, 35 (1957), 143-150, written with Dorothy Kline; “Phosphorus Metabolism of the Adrenal Glands of Rats Exposed to a Cold Environment,” in Revue canadienne de biologic, 16 (1957), 249, written with D. Nicholls;and “Discussion: Biosynthesis of Phosphatides in Brain and Nerve,” in Federation Proceedings16 (1957), 853, written with W. C. McMurray and K. P. Strickland.

Chief among Rossiter’s review articles are “Chemical Constituents of Brain and Nerve,” 11-52, and “The Biochemistry of Demyelination,” 696-714, both in Kenneth A. C. Elliott, Irvine H. Page, and J. H. Quastel, eds., Neurochemistry: The Chemistry of Brain and Nerve (Springfield, III., 1955; 2nd ed. 1962); “Lipid Metabolism,” in Derek Richter, ed., Metabolism of the Nervous System (London, 1957), 355-380; and “The Metabolism and Function of Phosphatides,” in Konrad E. Bloch, ed., Lipide Metabolism (New York, 1960), 69-127, written with K. P. Strickland.

II. Secondary Literature. Obituary notices and biographical sketches by Rossiter’s colleagues are in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, 14 (1976), 110-113; Journal of Neurochemistry, 27 (1976), 827-828; and Bulletin of the Canadian Biochemical Society, 13 , no. 1 (1976), 6-7, and 20 , no. 2 (1983), 10-13.

Rossiter’s activities as an educator and administrator are discussed in Murray Barr, A Century of Medicine at Western (London, Ontario, 1977), esp. 486-489; and John R. W. Gwynne-Timothy, Western’s First Century (London, Ontario, 1978).

Melvyn C. Usselman