John Denis McGarry, PhD: A Remembrance of a Master Metabolic Physiologist.

Abstract

John Denis McGarry, PhD (“Denis” to all who knew him), was the most charming and engaging man that I have ever known. He was also one of the most thoughtful and impactful scientists of his generation. Although remarkably talented, Denis was a humble man. This quality can be traced to his birth and upbringing in Widnes, a working-class town in northwest England near Liverpool. His father Cornelius McGarry was English, and his mother Sarah O’Dell was Irish. Cornelius worked in a chemical production plant making sulfuric acid, and his mother cared for Denis and his two sisters Ann and Pat. They were “quite poor but thrifty,” according to Denis’s wife Angela. Denis went to a local public school until the age of 11 and then won a scholarship to attend St. Francis Xavier’s College Catholic boys school from age 11 until graduation at age 18. During this period, Denis visited a research laboratory at the University of Liverpool and was intrigued by what he saw. Denis was an excellent student and was able to secure scholarships to attend The University of Manchester, where he earned both his Bachelor of Science and PhD degrees, the latter in 1966. His career-long focus on regulation of intermediary metabolism began with his PhD studies with Brian Hodgson at The University of Manchester, where he studied the metabolic fates of radiolabeled propionate in the bacterium Moraxella lwoffi (1,2). He also performed a postgraduate fellowship with Hugh K. King at the University of Liverpool and then moved with Professor King to The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he performed studies on bacterial lipoamide dehydrogenase (3). Left: Young Denis circa 1944. Right: J. Denis McGarry earns his PhD, The University of Manchester, 1966. Denis met Angela Caldwell, also from Widnes, through friends, and …