Architects of Structural Biology: Bragg, Perutz, Kendrew, Hodgkin

By John Meurig Thomas. Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-19-885450-0. Reviewer read electronic edition on the Kindle app.

The past year has again highlighted how important structural biology continues to be to the health and wellbeing of the human population. The extraordinary efforts to develop a vaccine to counter the COVID-19 pandemic have been made possible by the body of work that has revealed the structure of coronaviruses, how they interact with our bodies and critically their weaknesses. But how did structural biology come to exist as a field? Where does it have its roots, and how perhaps have these shaped the methodology applied today? This is what the book Architects of Structural Biology seeks to address, framing this about the achievements and personalities of some of its pioneers. 

The author of the book, John Meurig Thomas, who passed away in November 2020, had a unique perspective on this topic. A celebrated scientist and historian of a number of fields, and though not a structural biologist himself, he views the beginnings of the field through the lens of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory and Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge, UK – institutions in which he held leadership positions.

The book is structured as a series of monographs that chart different aspects of the beginnings of structural biology, focusing mostly on activities within first the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory, which had its home at the Royal Institution in London, and then later the UK Medical Research Council’s Laboratory for Molecular Biology, which was founded in Cambridge. The work is framed round four pioneers, named in the title: Laurence Bragg, Max Perutz, John Kendrew and Dorothy Hodgkin. That said, the monographs do in fact reveal a large cast of other personalities who each shaped the field in these early years.   

The structuring of the monographs starts from the founding of crystallography and diffraction experiments and charts the application of these from simple salts, to small organic structures, to larger molecular material up to the realisation of the first full protein and enzyme structures. Within each, the achievements of those named in the title are set in the context of their contemporaries and the events surrounding them. The impact of the beginnings of structural biology is brought right up to the present day, through the current research of those now residing at Peterhouse College and the innovations of cryo-electron microscopy in the last two chapters. 

From a personal view, I am often uncomfortable with veneration of individuals in the founding of fields of science that have lasted decades and I did find the focus of the book upon four scientists somewhat strange. There is more content written in this work about Aaron Klug and Linus Pauling than there is about Hodgkin and Kendrew, for instance, though the reader is directed to Ferry’s 1998 biography of Hodgkin and alludes to Wassarman’s now published work on Kendrew. I was left a little puzzled on the framing of Hodgkin as an architect of structural biology. I can see how Thomas applied this moniker to Bragg (in his leadership of the Royal Institution and encouragement of the early years of structural biology), to Perutz (in his role in establishing the Laboratory of Molecular Biology) and to Kendrew (in his inaugural directorship of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory), but I feel that Thomas did not elaborate enough on Hodgkin’s role as an architect of the field. This book did also, briefly, draw my attention to a group of still invisible individuals – the human ‘computers’ that were vital in the early charting of the hundreds of thousands of diffraction spots from the early diffraction patterns; I would like to read more on the contribution of this group. 

I do enjoy reading accounts of this rather golden time of science; in particular I find the tales of chance encounters and interdisciplinary meetings that pepper the monographs very enriching. A haunting passage recounts how Max Perutz (who was from an Austrian-Jewish family) hosted Heidelberg for dinner in Cambridge, and later remarked how he was unconvinced that Heidelberg had not assisted the Nazis in their attempts to create an atomic weapon. Though I have previously read much on the life of Dorothy Hodgkin and Laurence Bragg, I admit quite a blind spot as to the writings of Max Perutz, and am now searching for a copy of his Is Science Necessary? work.

The book is a fascinating behind-the-scenes journey through the early years of structural biology, though viewed very much from a UK perspective. The real insight of this book is not so much the stories of the four cited pioneers, but their interactions with a wide cast of people who founded the field. The commentary on different leadership styles is very acute, as well as the respectful telling of some of the personality clashes and rivalries that developed. This would be an excellent read for those who are beginning to specialise in structural biology, and those with a love of the history of crystallography.