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 A UK postage stamp issued on 25 March 2014 |
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A UK postage stamp issued on 25 March 2014 |
Max Perutz was a Jew born in Austria who fled to England to escape the Nazis.
As a young man he was an enthusiastic skier and worked on the formation of ice in glaciers. The 'Perutz Glacier' in Crystal Sound in the Antarctic is named after him.
He was accepted as a research student of J.D.Bernal in Cambridge to study X-ray crystallography. He completed his Ph.D under Lawrence Bragg who advised him to study the structure of Haemoglobin.
He became Chairman of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and
worked with John Kendrew with whom he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1962 for
showing how X-ray crystallography can be used to determine protein structures such as Haemoglobin.
The Vega Science Trust recorded 8 hours of interviews with him
during 2001,
Face2Face with Max Perutz
The new lecture theatre in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology
was named after him in 2002; sadly, he did not live to attend the dedication
ceremony himself. There is a memorial plaque to him in the lecture theatre inscribed with a saying of his:
"In science truth always wins"
Georgina Ferry wrote his biography, "Max Perutz and the secret of Life"
reviewed by Derry Jones in History of Physics Group newsletter
no 23 page 61.
Page last updated 25 August 2014