After
house posts in Glasgow, Macintyre began as a trainee
pathologist in
Sheffield, which involved working as a demonstrator in the laboratory of Dr (later Sir)
Hans Krebs, the future
Nobel laureate. His contact with Krebs would influence his career choice in
chemical pathology. He joined the chemical pathology department at the
Royal Postgraduate Medical School, at the
Hammersmith Hospital in London as a registrar. In 1954 he became the
Sir Jack Drummond Memorial Fellow, which enabled him to embark on a career of research in biochemistry, initially under the mentorship of Professor Earl King. He designed and constructed a
flame photometer that enabled very accurate measurements of
blood calcium and
magnesium levels. This led to studies of
magnesium deficiency. Shortly after
Douglas Harold Copp's discovery of the hormone
calcitonin, Macintyre's group demonstrated that the hormone was produced in the parafollicular cells of the thyroid rather than the parathyroid gland as suggested by Copp. In 1967 the Gardner International Award was made jointly to Copp and Macintyre for their work on the origin and existence of
calcitonin. His team also demonstrated
calcitonin gene-related peptide, which they went on to sequence and then characterise. A major contribution to education during Macintyre's time at the Hammersmith Hospital was the organisation of international endocrinology conferences held every two years between 1967 and 1981. These were attended by leading workers in the field of endocrinology from around the world. He was promoted to the chair of
endocrine chemistry and chemical pathology in 1967, and in 1982 was appointed director of the Wellcome Endocrine Unit based at Hammersmith Hospital. The research interest expanded into the role of
vitamin D in
bone metabolism. On retiring from the Hammersmith Hospital, Macintyre became research director at the William Harvey Research Institute of the
University of London. There his research centred on the role of
nitric oxide in bone metabolism. == Awards and honours ==