Frederick Gowland Hopkins began his Cambridge career by teaching physiology and anatomy in the Physiological Laboratory. In 1902, the new Department of Biochemistry at the University of Liverpool offered him a chair in Biochemistry, whereupon our local physiologists persuaded the University of Cambridge to make Hopkins a Reader here.
In 1906, the University established a Professorship of Biological Chemistry, first held by the proto-zoologist George Henry Falkiner Nuttall as Director of the Molteno Institute (now the Molteno Building, part of the Department of Pathology). In 1909, the Special Board for Medicine agreed to propose a personal Chair in Biochemistry, as already created at Liverpool, to which Hopkins was elected in November 1914.