A Nobel Fellow on Every Floor

In Cambridge in the 1950s, several research groups funded by the Medical Research Council were producing exciting results. In the Biochemistry Department, Sanger determined the amino acid sequence of insulin, and was awarded a Nobel Prize for this in 1958. At the Cavendish Laboratory, in the MRC Unit for the Study of the Molecular Structure of Biological Systems, Watson and Crick solved the structure of DNA, and Perutz and Kendrew produced the first three-dimensional maps of protein structures - haemoglobin and myoglobin - for which all four were later awarded Nobel Prizes. This made it timely to create, in 1962, a new Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge by amalgamating these groups with other MRC-funded groups from London. The Laboratory has become one of the most successful in its field, and the number of Nobel Prizes awarded over the years to scientists at LMB has risen to thirteen. This book follows the development of LMB, through the people who moved into the new Laboratory and their research. It describes events and personalities that have given the Laboratory a friendly, family atmosphere, while continuing to be scientifically productive.

John Finch joined Rosalind Franklin as a PhD student at Birkbeck College, London in 1955 studying the structure of viruses by X-ray diffraction. He came to the new LMB in 1962 with the Birkbeck group, which was now led by Aaron Klug after Rosalind's death in 1958. In addition to continuing the work on virus structure, as the group's interests diversified, he became involved in other research, studying the structures, for example, of transfer RNA and chromatin. He is at present a 'retired worker' at LMB.