Max Perutz

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Max Ferdinand Perutz (19 May 1914 – February 2, 2002) was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew for their analyses of haemoglobin and myoglobin's cellular biochemistry.

In 1971 and 1979, he went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Copley Medal.

(1962–79) He founded and chaired the Cambridge Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), one of fourteen of whose scientists have received Nobel Prizes.

The Cambridge University Press's History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4 (1870 to 1990) Perutz' contributions to molecular biology in Cambridge are chronicled.

Early life and education

Perutz was born in Vienna, the son of Adele "Dely" (Goldschmidt) and Hugo Perutz, a textile manufacturer. His parents were Jewish by ancestry, but Perpetuo in the Catholic faith had baptized Perutz. Despite Perutz's atheist in his later years, he was not against punishing others for their religious convictions.

His parents hoped that he would be a chemist, but he became interested in chemistry while attending school. He began his studies in 1936 and overcame his parents' objections. Becoming aware by lecturer Fritz von Wessely of the recent research being carried out at the University of Cambridge by a team led by Gowland Hopkins, he requested Professor Mark who was about to visit Hopkins to inquire whether there would be a place for him. Mark forgot, but he'd been to J.D. Bernal, who was looking for a research scholar to help with X-ray crystallography research, was looking for a research student to help him with his X-ray crystallography research. Perutz was disconcerned because he was unaware of any information about the issue. Mark responded by implying that he would soon learn. Bernal accepted him as a research student in his crystallography research group at the Cavendish Laboratory. His father had paid £500 with his London agent to assist him. He learned quickly. Bernal encouraged him to investigate protein structure by using the X-ray diffraction technique. He started his doctoral thesis on protein crystals as protein crystals were difficult to obtain. Haemoglobin was a topic that was supposed to be occupying him for the bulk of his career. He obtained his Ph.D. under Lawrence Bragg.

He applied to and became a member of Peterhouse because it was the best food in Kings and St. John's colleges. In 1962, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse. He took a keen interest in the junior members and was a regular and popular speaker at the Kelvin Club, the College's scientific society.

Perutz's parents managed to flee to Switzerland when Hitler took over Austria in 1938, but they had lost all of their money. Perutz also lost money as a result. Perutz was accepted as part of a three-man team investigating the conversion of snow to ice in Swiss glaciers in 1938, thanks to his ability to ski, experience in mountaineering, and his understanding of crystals. His resulting article for the Royal Society introduced him as a glacier specialist.

Lawrence Bragg, a professor of Applied Physics at the Cavendish University, felt that Perutz's study into haemoglobin had promised and urged him to apply for a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to continue his research. Perutz's application was accepted in January 1939, and with the funds Perutz was able to bring his parents from Switzerland to England in March 1939.

Perutz was rounded up alongside other people of German or Austrian origins and sent to Newfoundland on Winston Churchill's orders. After being held for several months, he returned to Cambridge. He was asked for advice after a battalion of commandos was landed in Norway and whether they should be hidden in shelters under glaciers because of his previous research into the changes in the crystals in the layers of a glacier before the war. In 1942, he was recruited for Project Habakkuk due to his knowledge of ice. This was a little-known proposal to build an ice platform in mid-Atlantic that could be used to refuel planes. He looked at the recently produced ice-woodpulp mixture known as pykrete to get to the end. In a little known location underneath Smithfield Meat Market in London, he carried out early experiments on pykrete.

He returned to glaciology for a brief period of time after the war. He outlined how glaciers flow.

Perutz, a researcher from the Medical Research Council (MRC), was able to find funds for studies into biological systems' molecular structure in 1947. He was able to establish the Molecular Biology Unit at the Cavendish Laboratory thanks to his financial support. The Perutz's new unit attracted researchers who realized that molecular biology had a lot to offer, including Francis Crick in 1949 and James D. Watson in 1951.

Perutz demonstrated in 1953 that diffracted X-rays from protein crystals could be phased out by comparing the crystals of the protein with and without heavy atoms attached. He used this technique in 1959 to determine the protein haemoglobin's molecular structure, which transports oxygen in the blood. The results of his research culminated in his joint award of Chemistry with John Kendrew in 1962. Every year, X-ray crystallography determines the molecular characteristics of several thousand proteins.

Perutz and his colleagues continued to investigate the hydroxy- and deoxy-globin crystal structure at a high resolution after 1959. As a result, in 1970, he was finally able to explain how it converts between its deoxygenated and oxygenated states, triggering oxygen absorption and subsequent release of oxygen to muscles and other organs. Further research over the next two decades has refined and corroborated the concept. In addition, Perutz investigated the cellular changes in a variety of haemoglobin diseases and how they might influence oxygen binding. He hoped that the molecule would be used as a drug receptor and that it would be possible to prevent or reverse genetic abnormalities associated with sickle cell anemia. Another area of concern was the evolution of the haemoglobin molecule from species to species in order to accommodate varied habitats and patterns of behaviour. Perutz's last years concentrated on protein changes that had been attributed to Huntington and other neurodegenerative disorders. The onset of Huntington disease is correlated to the number of glutamine repeats, according to him, as they bond to form what he describes as a polar zipper.

Watson and Crick were frantically trying to determine the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)'s crystal structure in the early 1950s, when Perpetuzum found them an unpublished 1952 progress report for Sir John Randall's King's College laboratory. This issue included X-ray diffraction photographs taken by Rosalind Franklin, which were especially useful in determining the double-helix structure.

Perutz did this without Franklin's knowledge or permission, and before she had a chance to release a detailed summary of her unpublished progress report, she did not. Randall and others were dissatisfied with the findings and the awards resulting from this "gift" later this year.

Perutz later published the paper in an attempt to clarify the subject, saying that it contained nothing that Franklin had not said in a talk she gave in late 1951, which Watson had attended. Perutz also stated that the study was sent to an MRC committee in order to "establish contact among the various groups of people working for the Council." The MRC funded Randall's and Perutz' labs.

Perutz, a regular reviewer/essayist for The New York Review of Books on biomedical topics in his later years. Many of these essays have been reprinted in his 1998 book I wish I had made you angry earlier. In 1985, the New Yorker printed "That Was the War: Enemy Alien" a tile of his experience as an internee during World War II. Perutz's penchant for writing was a late invention. Leo Perutz, a respected writer, told Max when he was a boy that he would never be a writer, an unwarranted decision, as shown by Perutz's superb letters as an undergraduate. They are published in What a Time I Am Having: Selected Letters of Max Perutz. In 1997, Perutz was ecstatic to win the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing About Science.

In a lecture delivered at Cambridge on 'Life Molecules,' Perutz debunks philosopher Sir Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, as well as biologist Richard Dawkins. Popper's argument that science progresses through hypothesis generation and refutation was dismissed by the scientist, who stated that hypotheses are not purely the product of scientific study, and that, at least, molecular biology, they are not necessarily subject to revision. Perutz, Kuhn's assertion that science advances in paradigm shifts that are subjected to societal and cultural pressures is an inaccurate representation of modern science.

Scientists who reject faith, in particular Dawkins, were among the targets of these critiques. Statements defaming religious belief were made for Perutz tactless and also damage science's image. They are of a different order to protest Creationism's demonstrably inaccurate interpretation. "And if we do not believe in God," he said, "we should live as though we did."

Perutz wrote to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, warning that if President Bush's retaliation will result in the death of thousands more innocent civilians, we'll enter a world of growing terror and counter-terrorism. "I do hope that you will use your restraining power to avoid this happening"

In 1954, Perutz was named a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Max Perutz was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1962, received the Medal of Honour in 1967, and the Order of Merit in 1988, in addition to the Nobel Prize for Chemistry's joint research into haemoglobin and myoglobin.

Perutz was appointed a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1964 and received the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1967. In 1964, he was elected to EMBO membership.

The Max Perutz Prize was established by the European Crystallographic Association, named in his honour.

Perutz was invited to give the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Chicken, the Egg, and the Molecules in 1980.

Personal life

Perutz married Gisela Clara Peiser (1915–2005), a medical photographer, in 1942. Vivien (b.) and his two children had two children. Robert (b. 1944), an art historian; and Robin (b.). 1949 (via a professor of Chemistry at the University of York) was a member of the University of York. Gisela was a German immigrant (she was a Protestant whose own father was born Jewish) and she was a migrant (seeking a Jewish Catholic).

Hugo Perutz and Dely Perutz, a boy from Cambridge's parish, died on February 6, 2002, and his remains were interred with his parents Hugo Perutz and Dely Perutz. Gisela died on December 17, 2005, and her remains were interred in the same cemetery.

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