Some British Biographies from IUCr

Some brief Biographies from the IUCr

These brief biographies first appeared as part of the IUCr publication 'Section 1' of the November 1998 issue of 'Acta Crystallographica A', reprinted as 'Crystallography Across the Sciences' reviewed in June 99 issue of 'Crystallography News' They were kindly provided to the BCA by Sue King of the IUCr staff at Chester. Later additions made by Kate Crennell
Just click on the name of the one you want to read in the list below.

Keith Moffat is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Director of the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources at The University of Chicago. He obtained his BSc in Physics from the University of Edinburgh, where a conversation with William Cochran directed him towards biophysics. He obtained his PhD from Cambridge University in 1970, where he studied haemoglobin crystallography with Max Perutz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. After postdoctoral studies in rapid reaction kinetics with Quentin Gibson at Cornell University, he held faculty positions there until 1990. His research interests lie in reaction mechanisms studied by time-resolved macromolecular crystallography, and in applications of synchrotron radiation to structural biology.

Michael Hart is at present the Chairman of the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory. From 1975 to 1977, he was Special Advisor to the Central Policy Review Staff at the Cabinet Office, Whitehall, UK. From 1976 to 1984, he was Wheatstone Professor and Head of the Physics Department of King's College, London. He was Science Programme Coordinator for the SRS at the SERC Daresbury Laboratory from 1985 to 1988 and Professor of Physics at Manchester University from 1985 to 1993. His research interests are X-ray physics, especially X-ray optics.

B. T. M. Willis gained an honours degree in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 1948 and a PhD from the University of London in 1951. From 1951 to 1953, he was a member of the research staff of the General Electric Company, London, and from 1954 to 1984 a research scientist at the Atomic Energy Research Laboratory, Harwell, England. Since 1985, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Chenical Crystallography Laboratory, University of Oxford. He is a professorial Fellow of the University of Wales and has been a Visiting Professor in Physics in Denmark, India, Switzerland and Japan. He has published numerous papers on the theory and practice of neutron scattering, and has co-authored several books. Since 1966, he has organized at Harwell, and later at Oxford, regular biennial Summer Schools on Neutron Scattering. His work on behalf of the International Union of Crystallography includes being Chaiman of the Commission on Neutron Diffraction (1984-1987) and a Co-editor of Acta Crystallographica (1980-1990).

After studying at Cambridge, UK, Kenneth Charles Holmes carried out his doctoral research at Birkbeck College London under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus. After a sojourn in Boston, he returned to Cambridge to the newly open MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 1968, he moved to Heidelberg to open a new Department of Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Medical Research. He pioneered the use of synchrotron radiation as an X-ray source for diffraction experiments. His laboratory solved the structure of actin and the actin filament.

Jenny Glusker (née Pickworth) was born in England and educated at Oxford University, obtaining a DPhil with Dorothy Hodgkin as her supervisor. She was then a postdoc at Caltech working with Corey and Pauling. After that, she moved to Philadelphia to work with Lindo Patterson and has remained there at the Institute for Cancer Research, where she is a Senior Member. She has served as President of the American Crystallographic Association, and as Chairman of the US National Committee for Crystallography and of the IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Teaching. She is currently Editor of Acta Cryst. Section D, has co-authored some teaching texts and has taught at some of the schools mentioned in this article.

Durward Cruickshank joined E. G. Cox's chemical crystallography group at Leeds University in 1946. He published extensively in Acta Crystallographica from 1948 onwards on topics in crystal structure refinement. From 1962 to 1967, he was Joseph Black Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University. In 1967, he moved to UMIST. Since retirement, he has helped in the revival of the Laue method and latterly has been working on protein structure precision. He was an Editor of the 1992 IUCr Memorial Volume for Paul Ewald. He was IUCr Treasurer 1966-1972 and General Secretary 1970-1972.

Professor J. R. Helliwell BA (Physics, York), DPhil (Molecular Biophysics, Oxford), DSc (Physics, York), FInstP, FRSc, FIBiol. John Helliwell worked at Daresbury Laboratory's Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) from 1979 to 1993, whilst also a Joint Appointee with the Universities of Keele, York and Manchester, and as a scientific civil servant, and earlier on the NINA synchrotron. He has served on the ESRF Science Advisory Committee as Vice-Chairman and then Chairman, on the ESRF Machine Advisory Committee, and on the Council of the ESRF; as Chairman of the UK SRS Panel for Protein Crystallography; as Chairman of the Cornell University MACCHESS Advisory Committee; as a Member of the Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste Review Committee; as a Reviewer of the EMBL Outstation in Hamburg; on the Advisory Committee of the Georgia SER-CAT and a consultant to the Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association's CAT, both at APS. He was the founding Chairman of the International Union of Crystallography's Commission on Synchrotron Radiation. He is Professor of Structural Chemistry of the University of Manchester, a founding Editor of the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation, an Editor of the OUP Book Series on SR and Editor-in-Chief of Acta Crystallographica.

First Recipient of the 'Professor K Banerjee Endowment Lecture Silver Medal' of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) awarded in September 2000

Frank Allen was born in Reading, UK, and is a graduate of Imperial College London. Following postdoctoral work at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, he joined the embryo CCDC in 1970, becoming Deputy Director in 1991 and Scientific Director in 1997. His research interests are in database design, search and retrieval, and in applications of crystallographic information in structural chemistry. He is the current Editor of Acta Crystallographica Section B, Vice-President of the British Crystallographic Association and a Council Member of the European Crystallographic Association. He received the UK Royal Society of Chemistry Award for Structural Chemistry in 1994. He has interests in education, travel and sport (now at the observational level only!).

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