'I HAVE lived an unplanned life. I'm the luckiest blighter ever," smiles one of only two Scottish medical Nobel Prize winners.
It wasn't chance, however, but an inspirational education that ushered James Black, a son of the Fife coalfields, into an illustrious career that saw him discover beta-blockers, with their unprecedented impact on the treatment of heart disease, as
well as the first effective non- surgical treatment for stomach ulcers.
Now 85, Sir James, as he is today, has loaned more than 100 medals and other honours he has accumulated to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where they went on show yesterday. They will ultimately form part of a permanent display on scientific achievement when the Royal Museum re-opens in 2011 after a £46.4 million refurbishment.
Sir James and the exhibition curators hope the display will inspire future generations.
"I'm hoping that the message is that of an ordinary guy coming through what was an ordinary school in his day and … the world's your oyster," says the one-time pupil of Beath High School in Cowdenbeath, holding court in an upstairs room of the National Museum of Scotland. "I hope there's a wee bit of inspiration there."
And the Nobel prizewinner, member of the Order of Merit and holder of 20 honorary degrees reveals that when he was 15, his father, a mine manager, sent him down the pit for a month to experience the livelihood that awaited him if he could find no alternative. "I saw what these guys did – going into spaces this high to get coal," he grimaces.
In the museum's North Gallery, several cases of medals, scrolls, citations and photographs are on display, from the winged Victory statuette of the Lasker award for clinical medical research he won in 1976, to the gleam of the Nobel medal awarded in 1988 for leading the development of the beta-blocker Propranolol, and for synthesising Cimetidine, the first effective non-surgical treatment for stomach ulcers. Beside them lie surgical instruments – a reminder that previously, surgery was often the only solution.
Sir James was born in one mining community – Uddingston, in Lanarkshire – but grew up in another: Cowdenbeath, in Fife. His father went down the pits at 13, but took part-time education to become a mining engineer and mine manager.
Sir James credits the inspirational influence of his maths teacher at Beath High, Dr Waterson. "A brilliant man," he says. "Ordinarily he'd have gone on to become a highly successful academic, but I remember him telling me that the highest calling in the community he knew was to be a teacher, because the mining community didn't want their kids to go through what they had been through."
It was Dr Waterson who persuaded him to sit the entrance examination for St Andrews University when he was 16. "I'm a daydreamer, and daydreamers often don't do awfully well in the school system," he says. "So if I could just get this message over to teachers, to be on the qui vive (look-out] for people like me."
The scientist, chancellor of Dundee University from 1992 to 2006, has expressed in recent years his concern about science education, once telling The Scotsman: "You must cultivate education and research as the highest things, if you want to get somewhere. It's not just about money, it's about creating an environment where teachers feel appreciated."
At the museum, he admits: "It's not inspiring when you see cut-backs on the number of university teachers. It makes you feel that the subject is not considered important." While working with ICI, he and his team developed the beta-blocker, which effectively blocks the harmful impact of adrenaline on weakened hearts, revolutionising the management of heart disease, saving countless lives and improving quality of life for millions. Later, as head of biological research at Smith, Kline & French, he developed a treatment for stomach ulcers that avoided the need for potentially dangerous surgery.
National Museums Scotland science curator Dr Tacye Phillipson welcomes the display of Sir James's awards: "So much of museum science tends to portray the 19th century, so it's wonderful to be able to show that science in a museum can still be cutting-edge, still current.
"Sir James's research was of the most wonderful human importance, concerning stomach ulcers and heart conditions, two of the most prevalent medical problems. For one man to have done all that will really resonate with our visitors."
Only two Scots have ever been awarded the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine – to give it its full title. Sir James shared his with Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings, the trio cited for their discoveries of "important principles for drug treatment".
The other Scots medical Nobel winner was Sir Alexander Fleming. He shared the 1945 Nobel prize with Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley, who followed up Fleming's initial discovery of penicillin. Fleming's chance discovery that mould on a petri dish had curtailed the growth of bacteria is well known, but, says Sir James, there are rarely any "Eureka moments" today.
"You ask me whether these (ideas] come as a thing in the night. No sir, they don't," he grins. "But I suppose the lucky breaks are getting the chance to do it, and perhaps knowing where to start. But I didn't know where to start, it was blind man's buff."
He believes today's medical research tends to put too much faith in technology. "We used to put our faith in ideas and concepts, and then we would look around for the technique that would allow us to tackle the question; nowadays we develop the techniques, then look around for a question to try and answer. This has been the ruination of the industry – Ford production plant technology."
On the other hand, Sir James likes to describe himself simply as "a pharmacological toolmaker – because I make something that can be used".
FROM MINING ROOTS TO THE PINACLE OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE• 1924: Born to a mining family in Uddingston, South Lanarkshire, soon moving to Cowdenbeath, Fife, where he attends Beath High School.
• 1946: Gains his medical degree at St Andrews University, where much of the clinical medical work is at the affiliated Queen's College in Dundee, which eventually becomes the University of Dundee.
• 1946: Physiology lecturer at the University of Malaya.
• 1950: Returns to Scotland as senior lecturer in Glasgow University's Veterinary School.
• 1958: Joins ICI as a senior pharmacologist
• 1978: Joins Wellcome Research Laboratories as director of therapeutic research.
• 1984 : Becomes professor of pharmacology at King's College London.
• 1988: Is jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for development of beta-blockers and non-surgical treatment for stomach ulcers.
• 1992: Becomes chancellor of the University of Dundee, a post he held until 2006.
• 2000: Made a member of the Order of Merit, an order restricted to 24 individuals distinguished in the fields of arts, literature or science.
• 2006: The Sir James Black Centre opens at Dundee University.
