Nobel Prize Recipient. John Cowdery Kendrew, an English biochemist, received world-wide acclaim after being awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Jointly, he shared this award with an Austrian-born British molecular biochemist Max Perutz. These two scientists received the coveted award, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins." Well-respected in the scientific community, he received 14 nominations for the Nobel candidacy. Of the 14 nominations, four were made by 1915 Nobel Prize recipient Sir William Lawrence Bragg, with two being in chemistry and two in physics. He was given credit for the discovery of three-dimensional structures of the muscle protein myoglobin, which stores oxygen in muscle cells. He was educated at Dragon School in Oxford from 1923 to 1930 and Clifton College in Bristol from 1930 to 1936 before he was at Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving his Chemistry degree in 1939. During World War II, he became a member of the Air Ministry Research Establishment working with radar after he had a few months with reaction kinetics at Cambridge. In 1940 he joined the staff of Sir Robert Watson-Watt, Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry, and for the rest of the war was engaged in operational research at Royal Air Force headquarters, successively in Coastal Command, Middle East, and South East Asia, where he was Scientific Adviser to the Allied Air Commander-in-Chief. He held the honorary rank of Wing Commander R.A.F. In October of 1947, Perutz accepted the position of head of the newly constituted Medical Research Council Unit for Molecular Biology at Cambridge, with Kendrew being his entire staff, but still collaborating with Bragg. He earned his Ph.D. in 1949 and Science Doctorate in 1962. The two men used the technique of X-ray crystallography to study the structures of proteins. In 1960, with the use of special diffraction techniques and of computers to analyze the X-ray data, he was able to devise a three-dimensional model of the arrangement of the amino acid units in the myoglobin molecule, which was the first time this had been accomplished for any protein. From 1947 to 1975, he was a fellow of Peterhouse College, in Cambridge. He was made deputy chairman of the Medical Research Council Unit and, from 1971, chairman of the Defense Scientific Advisory Council. In 1971 he was knighted and was appointed in the same year as the project leader to develop the European Molecular Biology Lab founded in Heidelberg, Germany. After leaving Germany, he became president of St. John's College in Oxford in 1982 for seven years. Born the only child to parents of notoriety and distinction, his father was Wilfrid George Kendrew, a published reader in Climatology at the University of Oxford, and his mother, Evelyn May Graham Sandberg, an art historian, for many years resident in Florence, Italy, where she published works on the Italian Primitives under the nom de plume Evelyn Sandberg Vavals. He never married and had many interests outside of science including following his mother's footsteps in Italian art.

Nobel Prize Recipient. John Cowdery Kendrew, an English biochemist, received world-wide acclaim after being awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Jointly, he shared this award with an Austrian-born British molecular biochemist Max Perutz. These two scientists received the coveted award, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "for their studies of the structures of globular proteins." Well-respected in the scientific community, he received 14 nominations for the Nobel candidacy. Of the 14 nominations, four were made by 1915 Nobel Prize recipient Sir William Lawrence Bragg, with two being in chemistry and two in physics. He was given credit for the discovery of three-dimensional structures of the muscle protein myoglobin, which stores oxygen in muscle cells. He was educated at Dragon School in Oxford from 1923 to 1930 and Clifton College in Bristol from 1930 to 1936 before he was at Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving his Chemistry degree in 1939. During World War II, he became a member of the Air Ministry Research Establishment working with radar after he had a few months with reaction kinetics at Cambridge. In 1940 he joined the staff of Sir Robert Watson-Watt, Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry, and for the rest of the war was engaged in operational research at Royal Air Force headquarters, successively in Coastal Command, Middle East, and South East Asia, where he was Scientific Adviser to the Allied Air Commander-in-Chief. He held the honorary rank of Wing Commander R.A.F. In October of 1947, Perutz accepted the position of head of the newly constituted Medical Research Council Unit for Molecular Biology at Cambridge, with Kendrew being his entire staff, but still collaborating with Bragg. He earned his Ph.D. in 1949 and Science Doctorate in 1962. The two men used the technique of X-ray crystallography to study the structures of proteins. In 1960, with the use of special diffraction techniques and of computers to analyze the X-ray data, he was able to devise a three-dimensional model of the arrangement of the amino acid units in the myoglobin molecule, which was the first time this had been accomplished for any protein. From 1947 to 1975, he was a fellow of Peterhouse College, in Cambridge. He was made deputy chairman of the Medical Research Council Unit and, from 1971, chairman of the Defense Scientific Advisory Council. In 1971 he was knighted and was appointed in the same year as the project leader to develop the European Molecular Biology Lab founded in Heidelberg, Germany. After leaving Germany, he became president of St. John's College in Oxford in 1982 for seven years. Born the only child to parents of notoriety and distinction, his father was Wilfrid George Kendrew, a published reader in Climatology at the University of Oxford, and his mother, Evelyn May Graham Sandberg, an art historian, for many years resident in Florence, Italy, where she published works on the Italian Primitives under the nom de plume Evelyn Sandberg Vavals. He never married and had many interests outside of science including following his mother's footsteps in Italian art.

Bio by: Linda Davis