Max Ferdinand Perutz, Biochemist

1962 Chemistry Nobel Laureate, studies in structures of haemoglobin and globular proteins.

British Biochemist Max F. Perutz

Max Ferdinand Perutz, FRS, OM, CBE (May 19, 1914, Vienna, Austria – February 6, 2002, Cambridge, United Kingdom) was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist. Both his parents, Hugo Perutz and Dely Goldschmidt, came from families of textile manufacturers who had made their fortune in the 19th century by the introduction of mechanical spinning and weaving into the Austrian monarchy.

Perutz shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of hemoglobin and globular proteins.

In 1936, after completing his first university degree at the University of Vienna, Perutz became a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, Univeristy of Cambridge, in crystallography research team under J.D. Bernal. He completed his PhD. under William Lawrence Bragg. In Cambridge he started to work on haemoglobin, which was to occupy him for most of his professional career.

Max Perutz won the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979. At Cambridge he founded and chaired (1962–79) The Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, fourteen of whose scientists have won Nobel Prizes.

Perutz’s contributions to molecular biology in Cambridge are documented in The History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4 (1870 to 1990) published by the Cambridge University Press 1992).

Sources:

“Max F. Perutz – Biography”. Nobelprize.org. 18 Jul 2011.  nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1962/perutz-bio. Retrieved July 18, 2011.

Max F. Perutz, Wikipedia