Klug to lead Royal Society

Sir Aaron Klug, director of the UK Medical Research Council's Laboratory of MolecularBiology (LMB), has been nominated as the next president of the Royal Society in November 1995. Klug is widely known for his work on crystallographic electron microscopy and the structure of biologically significant molecules, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1982. Klug has also been a strong proponent of the need to protect basic science from excessive government influence. Two years ago, his stout defense of MRC labs such as the LMB helped to persuade the government to distance itself from proposals that all such labs should be separated from the councils that finance them (see Nature, 360, 614; 1994).