Dalziel spent the greater part of his scientific career at the
Department of Biochemistry of the
University of Oxford. He worked primarily on liver alcohol
dehydrogenases, and is well known in enzymology for his idiosyncratic way of representing the kinetic equations of two-substrate reactions. He wrote the typical equation as follows: \frac{[\mathrm{E_0}]}{v} = \phi_0 + \frac{\phi_\mathrm{A}}{[\mathrm{A}]} + \frac{\phi_\mathrm{B}}{[\mathrm{B}]} + \frac{\phi_\mathrm{AB}}{[\mathrm{A}][\mathrm{B}]} for a reaction between A and B with rate
v. The coefficients \phi are known as
Dalziel coefficients. This system has not been widely adopted. A more usual way of writing the same relationship (with the same symbols for the concentrations) would be as follows: v = \frac{k_0[\mathrm{E_0}][\mathrm{A}][\mathrm{B}]} {K_{\mathrm{iA}}K_{\mathrm{mB}} + K_{\mathrm{mB}}[\mathrm{A}] + K_{\mathrm{mA}}[\mathrm{B}] + [\mathrm{A}][\mathrm{B}] } Here K_{\mathrm{mA}} and K_{\mathrm{mB}} are the Michaelis constants (concentrations at half-saturation) for A and B at limiting (saturating) concentrations of B and A respectively, and K_{\mathrm{iA}} (
not the same as K_{\mathrm{mA}}) is a type of inhibition constant. Dalziel was a professorial fellow of
Wolfson College, and in 1975 was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society ==References==