He was a leading physiologist who carried out ground-breaking research into the body’s vital sodium pump, but Professor Ian Glynn, who has died aged 94, had a lighter, quirkier side to his personality.

While writing on science subjects for a more general readership influenced by his research into philosophy and psychology, he published An Anatomy of Thought: The Origin and Machinery of the Mind (2000), which covered emotion, memory, attention, free will and consciousness.

But so magical was his thinking that he was also able to present his readers with a glimpse into the unexpected. An example of this was his explanation that the meteorite that fell into Murchison, Australia in 1969 included in its chemical composition a key neurotransmitter in the human brain.

He also recalled the noted medical case of “Patient HM” who, following a neurosurgical operation could not remember anything for more than a few minutes yet managed to navigate complicated paper and pencil mazes, despite never recalling that he had ever worked through a maze before.

Professor Glynn was one of three scientists credited for their key roles in the discovery and understanding of the sodium–potassium pump, a vital component in the life of the cell, a protein in the membrane, identified in 1957 by the Danish scientist and 1997 Nobel Chemistry Prize co-winner Jens Christian Skou.

But it was the two other researchers prominent in the field —Glynn, and the American physiologist Robin (Robert) Post — who unravelled the way it works.
One of its key functions is regulating blood volume and blood pressure and keeping the brain’s batteries charged.

It all began in 1953 when Glynn enrolled for a PhD in the laboratory of Alan Hodgkin at the University of Cambridge.

In association with fellow physiologist Andrew Huxley, Hodgkin had completed a series of experiments on the flow of current in axonal membranes — work that would win them a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ten years later.

81JNhHmf1DL

Professor Glynn's book An Anatomy of Thought

Glynn, was first introduced to the mysteries of the pump in the mid 1950s and, in a speech on his 80th birthday he recalled that he accurately predicted that this was a project destined to “keep me busy for the next 40 years”.

Born lan Galinsky, he was brought up in Hackney, London, the second of the three children of Hyman “Hymie” and Lottie (née Fluxbaum), a medical family who had fled Eastern Europe when they were young. They Anglicised the family name to Glynn to avoid the antisemitism prevalent in the 1930s. Glynn grew up in an extended family with siblings, Alan and Angela, aunts and uncles and a synagogue nearby.

His grandfather Louis Galinsky, was a founder member of the Montague Rd Beth Hamedrish and Ian, evacuated with City of London School, to Marlborough during the Second World War, celebrated his barmitzvah in a small Methodist church there, loaned to the Jewish community for shul services.

His sister, Angela Colman, explained that because of their proximity to their Yiddish-speaking grandparents “our elder brother, Prof Alan Glynn, and I were brought up to be bilingual, English/Yiddish.

At some time in his early 20s, Ian decided to teach himself to read Yiddish (as against Hebrew which he had learnt in cheder classes) in order to read some of the Yiddish plays which my grandmother had seen at the Yiddish Theatre before the war and which she was always talking about. He always had a great love of good writing; it was he who later introduced me to the great novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer.”

Glynn attended Sigdon Road School and won a scholarship to the City of London School, where, rejecting his headmaster’s attempts to influence him towards the classics, he opted to read medicine.

This was partly triggered by a memory of his youngest aunt dissecting a human brain on the table when he was eight years old! There was also a genuine skeleton in the cupboard which had been studied by three generations of the family.

Glynn entered Trinity College, Cambridge as an undergraduate reading medicine and was inspired by the teaching of his director of studies, Alan Hodgkin and Kenneth Bailey. In his third year he did a part II in biochemistry, encouraged by Bailey, who also introduced him to the late Beethoven quartets.

After graduating with a first-class degree, Glynn spent three years studying clinical medicine at University College Hospital, where he particularly enjoyed “two weeks spent delivering babies” and six months as house physician at the Central Middlesex Hospital.

There during the Great Smog of 1952, he found so many patients with bronchopneumonia that sometimes he had to write “Not Bronchopneumonia” in large letters on the notes of other patients!

In 1955 he was elected to a research fellowship at Trinity, and in 1956 completed his PhD.
He spent his National Service in the RAF Medical Branch as medical officer to RAF Sutton Bridge.

When it closed down Glynn’s understanding of hydraulics proved invaluable in helping the surgical team at Papworth establish techniques for open-heart surgery.

In 1958 he was married to Jenifer Franklin, the sister of the scientist Rosalind Franklin, in the former New West End Synagogue, by Rabbi Louis Jacobs, before personal controversy led to the creation of the New London Synagogue, which Jacobs would head as rabbi of the future Masorti movement.

Glynn became a Fellow and Vice Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1980 to 1986, and was elected FRS in 1970 for his work on the sodium pump.

From 1986 to 1995 he was appointed Professor of Physiology and retired as Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the University of Cambridge. Apart from Anatomy of Thought he also published Elegance in Science: The Beauty of Simplicity in 2010.

He is survived by his wife Jenifer, their two daughters and a son, and his sister Lady Colman.
His elder brother Prof Alan Glynn, former Fleming Professor of Bacteriology at St Mary’s and Head of the Public Health Laboratories, Colindale, predeceased him.
GLORIA TESSLER

Ian Glynn, born June 3, 1928. Died July 7, 2022