David Mervyn Blow FRS FInstP^[6] (27 June 1931 – 8 June 2004)^[5][7][8] was an influential British biophysicist. He was best known for the development of X-ray crystallography, a technique used to determine the molecular structures of tens of thousands of biological molecules. This has been extremely important to the pharmaceutical industry.^[9]

Early life and education

Blow was born in Birmingham, England. He was educated at Kingswood School in Bath, Somerset and the University of Cambridge where he won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His PhD was awarded in 1958 for X-ray analysis of haemoglobin supervised by Max Perutz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).^[10][11]

Career and research

Following graduation from Cambridge, Blow spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded by the Fulbright Foundation^[5]

In 1954, he met Max Perutz;^[12] they began to study a new technique wherein X-rays would be passed through a protein sample at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. This eventually led to the creation of a three-dimensional structure of haemoglobin.^[13] Blow was appointed professor of biophysics at Imperial College London in 1977. His doctoral students include Richard Henderson,^[2][3] Paul Sigler,^[1] and Alice Vrielink.^[14]

Awards and honours

Blow was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1972. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1987.^[5]

Personal life

Blow married Mavis Sears in 1955, and they had two children, a son Julian and a daughter Elizabeth.^[5][8] He died of lung cancer at the age of 72, in Appledore, Torridge (near Bideford), Devon.^[7][8]

References

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