Dr David Ashton obituary
11 September 1944 鈥� 31 May 2023
David was born in Scotland towards the end of World War II. His parents recognised his academic skill and encouraged him to higher levels of education. This resulted in him achieving a chemistry diploma and Ph D at St Andrews University. His PhD supervisor was Lord Tedder, Purdie Professor of Chemistry.
David’s PhD was about radicals and employed mass spectroscopy analysis. From St Andrews David went to Cambridge University as a post-doctoral fellow. Soon after he was offered a research position at Wellcome Research Laboratories at Beckenham where he worked with Salvador Moncada who was Director of Research.
A paper on “Vascular endothelial cells synthesize nitric oxide (NO) from L-arginine” was co-authored with S. Moncada and R.M.J. Palmer and published in Nature in 1988 and received over 5000 citations. By using a unique connection of the cells with a mass spectrometer they proved that nitric oxide was released from the endothelial cells induced by bradykinin. This research proved that L-arginine is the precursor for NO synthesis in vascular endothelial cells.
Later David become the deputy department head of the Department of Physical Sciences and was heavily involved with high resolution mass spectrometry. He developed High Performance Liquid Chromatography methods to isolate the route of manufacture impurities, at parts per billion levels and identified these impurities using High Resolution Mass Spectroscopy. The results of this work were used to protect the Company's patents during litigation on several company products such as Acyclovir, AZT and Trimethoprim. David was often called as an expert witness at Court.
In 1995 when Glaxo purchased Wellcome, David took early retirement but his expertise in patent protection was needed and GlaxoWellcome employed him as consultant for many years.
The School of Pharmacy, University of London was able to purchase a new mass spectrometer that served not just the Pharmaceutical Chemistry department but other departments in the university as David generously donated his fees from his consultancy for this purpose.
David joined The 欧美AV in 1966 and became a M欧美AV member in 1969.
David supervised and mentored several PhD students during this time. In the past 6 years he was the scientific and legal advisor to Bio-Mimetic Chromatography Ltd. He helped several master’s students from School of Pharmacy Drug Discovery courses who had internship work with this company. He lived a very modest life surrounded by his model trains and books on the history of Britain and World War II, of which he was extremely knowledgeable and another of his passion, something he had in common with his father and Professor Tedder.
David is greatly missed by colleagues and students whom he collaborated with and supported through his life.
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