I have Jim Franks of Newton TV to thank for the opportunity to sit around a table with some of the current scientists at the world-famous MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology to talk about the legacy of its founder, Max Perutz.
The discussion was part of a video that you can see at The Guardian web-site and is intercut with previously unseen interview footage of Pertuz himself looking back on his scientific life. I know I’m biased, but it’s a fascinating film.
I hope you’ve heard of Perutz. He’s a scientific hero of mine — it was his patient, tenacious pursuit of the structure of the oxygen-carryng blood protein haemoglobin that inspired my own move into structural biology.
But he wasn’t just a great scientist; he was also a wonderful mentor and a canny science administrator. His legacy is very much alive, as I discovered in the course of a delightful conversation with present and former MRC-LMB directors Hugh Pelham and Richard Henderson, and other current members of staff — Kiyoshi Nagai, Lori Passmore and Andrew Carter. I think Max Perutz still has a lot to teach us about how to do science properly. I hope you’ll watch.
