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SUMMARY:Architects of Structural Biology: Bragg\, Perutz\, Kendrew and Hod
 gkin
DTSTART:20191003T181500
DTSTAMP:20260506T061822Z
UID:f5e8fb85bb0597695dc3d36b2a209d9e4e61da6780075846de94d919
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Sir John Meurig Thomas\n\nThe lecturer\, a personal friend of 
 Perutz\, Kendrew\, Klug\, Hodgkin and Phillips\, was formerly the Director
  of the Royal Institution of GB\, former Head of the Department of Physica
 l Chemistry and former Master of Peterhouse\, University of Cambridge. He 
 is a solid-state\, surface and materials chemist and recipient of several 
 awards\, including the Willard-Gibbs\, Pauling\, Kapitza\, Natta\, Stokes\
 , Davy and Faraday medals. A New mineral\, meurigite\, is named after him.
  He was awarded the Royal Medal for Physical Sciences by the Royal Society
  in 2016.\nBy John Meurig Thomas\nDepartment of Materials Science and Meta
 llurgy\, University of Cambridge\n\nWhen Max Perutz and John Kendrew\, pri
 ncipal founders of structural molecular biology\, set about\, in the late 
 1940s\, to solve the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin\, many scient
 ists\, notably developmental biologists and physiologists\, ridiculed the 
 name molecular biology and others accused them and their team\, which late
 r included Crick and Watson\, of practicing biochemistry without license. 
 Yet the revolution that they\, Dorothy Hodgkin and their mentor Lawrence B
 ragg\, initiated in the early 1950s led to a new era in modern medicine\, 
 and had a transformative influence on all aspects of biology.\nIn addition
 \, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (under the aegis of the U.K. Medica
 l Research Council) that they established in 1962 in Cambridge\, is arguab
 ly one of the most successful advanced research centres ever. Twenty three
  Nobel Laureates (11 of them from the USA) have worked there\; and numerou
 s medicines used world-wide for the treatment and cure of breast cancer\, 
 arthritis and life-threatening respiratory conditions have emerged from di
 scoveries made there.\nHow was such a successful laboratory founded and ma
 naged? And how did the four protagonists – three chemists and a physicis
 t – and other great contemporaries of theirs interact? This talk will ad
 dress these questions and describe individual personalities\, achievements
 \, idiosyncrasies\, and the roles of J. D. Bernal (friend of Picasso\, Pau
 l Robeson and Earl Mountbatten)\, Francis Crick\, Aaron Klug and David Phi
 llips\, who solved the first structure of an enzyme at the Royal Instituti
 on (RI). It was at the RI\, and later in Departments of Mineralogy and Tex
 tile Physics\, that Bernal and Astbury first investigated the structures o
 f “living molecules”. The rivalry between the Cambridge trio and the b
 rilliant\, charismatic\, U.S. scientist Linus Pauling will also be discuss
 ed.\n 
LOCATION:Forum Rolex https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==RLC%20E1%20240
STATUS:CANCELLED
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