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Philip Randle was one of the world's foremost researchers into mammalian metabolism. Many of his findings were concerned with insulin's role in metabolism and with the control of secretion of the hormone from the pancreatic islets of Langerhans beta-cells. The ideas generated by his investigations laid the foundations for countless subsequent other studies and have a direct bearing on the understanding of diabetes.
Randle was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in 1926 and went to school at King Edward VI Grammar School, Nuneaton. He read Natural Sciences at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, gaining a First in Part II Biochemistry, and then Medicine at University College Hospital before returning to Cambridge to carry out his first research studies on insulin, under the supervision of Professor Frank Young. He was awarded his PhD in 1955 for a thesis entitled "Studies on the Metabolic Action of Insulin" and was immediately appointed Lecturer in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. In 1964, Randle was appointed founding Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at Bristol University. Under his leadership, the new department became one of the strongest in Britain and remains so to this day.
He went to Oxford as the first Professor of Clinical Biochemistry in 1975, and spent the rest of his career as head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Biochemistry. Randle was content for the NDCB to remain...