Perutz, Max Ferdinand (1914–2002)

Max Perutz, lecturing at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, c. 1985. He was chair of the laboratory from 1962, the year he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on the structure of the haemoglobin molecule.

Austrian-born British biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962 with his co-worker John Kendrew for work on the structure of the haemoglobin molecule.

Perutz, born and educated in Vienna, moved to Britain in 1936 to work on X-ray crystallography at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. After internment in Canada as an enemy alien during World War II, he returned to Cambridge and in 1947 was appointed head of the new Molecular Biology Unit of the Medical Research Council (MRC). From 1962 he was chair of the MRC's new Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Perutz first applied the methods of X-ray diffraction to haemoglobin in 1937, but it was not until 1953 that he discovered that if he added a single atom of a heavy metal such as gold or mercury to each molecule of protein, the diffraction pattern was altered slightly. Using this technique, he had worked out the precise structure of haemoglobin by 1960.

Later, Perutz tried to interpret the mechanism by which the haemoglobin molecule transports oxygen in the blood, realizing that an inherited disorder such as sickle-cell anaemia could be caused by a mutation of this molecule.