Bastien Gomperts
This article is more than 11 years old
Peter Tatham
Thu 7 Nov 2013 14.26 CET
My colleague and friend Bastien Gomperts, who has died aged 77 from respiratory failure, was a world-renowned research scientist in biochemistry and cell biology. As a professor at University College London, he studied cellular signalling mechanisms. He was best known for his work on the regulation of secretion, a fundamental biological process, showing that its mechanism in cells associated with allergy and inflammation is mediated by changes in cell calcium concentration and by proteins that bind the nucleotide GTP. Bastien was a memorable teacher and the author of two textbooks.
The Gomperts name, with its various spellings, derives from a community originating in the Lower Rhine around 1600, which then expanded across Europe and beyond. As with many other Jewish families, this entailed a degree of suffering, but on the way they acquired a reputation for – according to one chronicle of the family – “outstanding intellectual gifts and noble virtues of the heart”.
Bastien’s father, Coenraad, a Dutchman from Surinam, was a violinist and later a psychoanalyst. Bastien’s mother, Barbara Singer, a descendant of Rabbi Simeon Singer, was a musician, painter and photographer. She was a great friend of the ceramicist Lucie Rie (née Gomperz, therefore related to Bastien, although their most recent common ancestor died in 1647). This colourful background was enriched further by Bastien’s marriage in 1960 to Zerin Ismail, who was born in Madagascar, with connections in Pakistan and a family that also has a presence in London and Paris.
Intellectually confident and with a firm independence of mind, Bastien had a tendency to shun convention and question authority. Unimpressed by hierarchies, he was invariably generous to and supportive of those around him, always listening, always ready with advice, invited or uninvited. His other attributes were his energy, curiosity and sheer virtuosity, which he directed into an endless series of unusual projects, in retirement setting up a cabinet maker’s workshop in his basement where he crafted elegant furniture and boxes of unique design, often with complex, mathematically derived patterns.
Bastien hosted concerts in his home with the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, and supported visual artists through the Juliet Gomperts Trust, set up in memory of his youngest daughter, who died in an accident on the Khyber Pass in 1989.
He is survived by Zerin, their daughters Natasha and Miranda, and five grandchildren.