Peter Dennis Mitchell was born in Mitcham, Surrey, England, on 29 September 1920, the son of Christopher Gibbs Mitchell, a civil servant, and Kate Beatrice Dorothy Taplin Mitchell. He received his secondary education at Queens College in Taunton, England, and was admitted to Jesus College at Cambridge University in 1939. A graduate student of James F. Danielli in the department of biochemistry at Cambridge, Mitchell earned his doctorate degree in 1951. He taught biochemistry at Cambridge from 1951 until 1955, when he left to develop a chemical biology unit at Edinburgh University. He remained there until 1963, when poor health caused him to look for a calmer working atmosphere. Mitchell found a peaceful environment at Glynn House, an eighteenth-century manor house in Cornwall, that was converted by Mitchell into family living quarters and a research laboratory. Glynn Research Laboratories was organized and directed in 1964 by Mitchell and his colleague, Jennifer Moyle.

Mitchell's greatest scientific achievement...