John Kendrew; Won Nobel Prize for Study of Protein

John Cowdery Kendrew, a British molecular chemist who shared a 1962 Nobel Prize in chemistry for detailing the intricate structure of a major protein, has died. He was 80.

Kendrew, who was knighted and given the Order of the British Empire in 1963, died Aug. 23 in Cambridge, England.

He and colleague Max Ferdinand Perutz earned the Nobel for their work at Cambridge in cataloging elements in human blood and providing a major insight on how proteins do their crucial work.

Cited for their studies on globular proteins, they perfected methods using X-rays to map the structure of the vital bodybuilding large protein molecules. Laying bare the structure of the blood proteins, Kendrew concentrated on myoglobin while Perutz worked on hemoglobin.

Among those who inspired Kendrew to conduct his work were crystallographer J.D. Bernal, whom he encountered during his war work in Asia, and chemist Linus Pauling, whom he met during a trip to California.

Born in Oxford, Kendrew studied at Oxford and Cambridge and worked in radar technology with the Ministry of Aircraft Production during World War II.

The department that Kendrew and Perutz created at Cambridge is now known as the Laboratory for Molecular Biology. Kendrew served as the department chairman until 1974.

Kendrew then established the European Molecular Biology Laboratory at Heidelberg, Germany, and served as director until 1982.

He also helped set up a committee of scientists to keep tabs on worldwide gene experiments that could be considered both beneficial and hazardous, under the aegis of the International Council of Scientific Unions.

“What we want to do is accumulate a kind of pool of wise thinking to make sure that the use that is made of it is of a positive kind,” Kendrew said in 1976 as secretary general of the council that represents 18 international scientific unions and 65 academies and research groups.

Kendrew founded the Journal of Molecular Biology and edited it until his retirement in 1987 as president of St. John’s College at Oxford.

His extensive writings include the book “The Thread of Life: An Introduction to Molecular Biology.”