George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections Research Center
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Finding aid prepared by Jordan Patty
Repository
George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections Research Center
This collection contains revisions of a manuscript on biophysics as well as correspondence with George Mason University biology
professor Harold Morowitz.
Colin F. McClare was a biophysics professor who spent much of his academic career trying to devise a new theory to explain
biochemical processes. As a student, he attended Felsted School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he studied chemistry.
As a Medical Research Council student in 1958-1961, McClare conducted research on free radicals at Cambridge. As a Beit Fellow
in 1961-1963, he researched energy transfer in nucleic acids. McClare was awarded a Ph.D. in 1962, after which he became a
lecturer in Biophysics at King's College, London in 1963-1977. McClare's research in bioenergetics and the problems of muscle
contraction led him to conclude that classical thermodynamics was inadequate to explain biological processes and that the
application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to biological machines required the introduction of time scales. His ideas
were not generally accepted and, although he wrote extensively on the subject, his papers were denied publication until four
controversial papers appeared in the Journal of Theoretical Biology and Nature, 1971-1972. The essays generated vigorous debates
among scientists all over the world, but ultimately, McClare's unorthodox views failed to gain the approval of established
scientific opinion.
This collection contains revisions of a manuscript on biophysics as well as correspondence with George Mason University biology
professor Harold Morowitz.
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