Richard Henderson

Biography

Originally a physicist from Edinburgh, Richard started in protein crystallography in 1966 when he was a PhD student working with David Blow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the structure of chymotrypsin, which in 1967 was one of the first ever protein structures determined. As a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow at Yale, he characterised biochemically the voltage-dependent sodium channels from nerve membranes. in 1975 and back at LMB, he determined the first ever 3D structure of a membrane protein, bacteriorhodopsin. He then developed the methods for electron crystallography of 2D crystals, and used them to obtain the atomic structure of bacteriorhodopsin in 1990. He served as Joint-Head of the Structural Studies Division at LMB (1986-2000) and Director (1996-2006), while developing an interest in G-protein-coupled receptors and single particle electron microscopy. He is a fellow of the Royal Society (1983), a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences (1996), and has been awarded several prizes for his work (William Bate Hardy, Ernst Ruska, Rosensteil, Louis Jeantet and Gregori Aminoff). 

Research Interest

 Molecular Biology