John Kendrew
English biochemist and crystallographer (1917-1997) · United Kingdom · On the map · Scientists · Died at 80
Kendrew cracked the three-dimensional structure of a protein - myoglobin - and made the invisible architecture of life visible for the first time.
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John Cowdery Kendrew was born on 24 March 1917 in England, trained as a biochemist, and landed at the Cavendish Laboratory, where the hardest problems in science tended to gather. Working alongside Max Perutz, he used X-ray crystallography to map the atomic coordinates of haem-containing proteins - a task most thought impossible. The work paid off: in 1962, he and Perutz shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for revealing how proteins actually fold and function in three dimensions. Kendrew later moved into science administration, but the myoglobin structure remained his mark - the first time anyone had seen a protein's shape with their own eyes. He died on 23 August 1997.
