Earlier this year on the 6th. February, 2002 Max Perutz died. His name has been mentioned repeatedly in talking about haemoglobin and it was a subject he had made his own. Here is a brief account of his life and work.

On February 6th. 2002 Max Perutz died aged 87. He was born in Vienna on May 19th. 1914, into a family of textile manufacturers. A schoolmaster got him interested in chemistry and he went in 1932 to the University of Vienna to study chemistry. A course in biochemistry caught his interest and he decided to come to Cambridge in 1936 to work for a PhD. He remained in Cambridge for the rest of his life and continued working up to the end. Perutz sent of his last paper an hour before he went into hospital, "a marvellous crescendo and finale." He did his PhD with J.D. Bernal, originally from Nenagh, and an important figure in the world of crystallography. Perutz said of Bernal that he was "a restless genius always searching for something more important to do than the work of the moment." Bernal told Perutz that the secret of life was hidden in the structure of proteins and only X-ray crystallography could unlock it. So Perutz started his research by learning how to solve structures using X-rays and he decided to study haemoglobin, following a chance conversation with a cousin in Prague - it was abundant, biologically important and easy to crystallise. The search for its structure was to take 20 years. The young, penniless student was also helped by Sir Lawrence Bragg, then Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, who found a scholarship to support him through the war years.
Max Perutz' family were Jews, who had converted to Catholicism, but they still had to flee Austria in the face of Nazi persecution and came to England. Max and his father were interned as enemy aliens in 1940, first in England and then in Canada. At the camp in Quebec Perutz organised a university, where he taught X-ray crystallography. Following protests from friends in England, Perutz was released and returned to Cambridge. He worked for the war effort researching the properties of ice and Pykete (a frozen mixture of ice and woodpulp named after its inventor, Magnus Pyke), as part of a idea for an iceberg aircraft carrier, called Project Habbukuk.
In 1947 the Medical Research Council founded a unit in Cambridge to research the structure of biological systems, with Perutz as head and Kendrew (his first PhD student) as the only other member of staff. This became the world famous Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in 1962, with Perutz as chairman from 1962-1979.
Perutz and co-workers managed to solve the structure of haemoglobin in 1959 (published in Nature February 1960) and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962 for this work, together with John Kendrew, who had solved the structure of myoglobin. Having solved the structure of haemoglobin Perutz went on to find out the mechanism by which the molecule takes up and releases oxygen (see CinA! #64 and 65). He said: "We were like explorers who have discovered a new continent, but it was not the end of the voyage, because our much admired model did not reveal its inner workings - it provided no hint about the molecular mechanism of respiratory transport." 1

Max Perutz 1914-2002

In 1970 Perutz discovered that the change in spin state of the iron (from high to low spin) is the trigger for the change in structure that facilitates uptake of dioxygen. His continuing work on haemoglobin helped him and others to understand blood diseases like thalassemia and sickle-cell anaemia. By 1962 the MRC unit had grown from 2 people in 1947 to 90 people and as well as Perutz and Kendrew's Nobel Prize, two other members of the LMB - Francis Crick and James Watson - also won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962, for the structure of DNA (discovered in 1953). Perutz said about Watson and Crick: "When Crick and Watson lounged around, arguing about problems for which there existed as yet no firm experimental data, instead of getting down to the bench and doing experiments I thought they were wasting their time. However, like Leonardo, they sometimes achieved most when they seemed to be working least, and their apparent idleness led them to solve the greatest of all biological problems, the structure of DNA. There is more than one way of doing good science." 2 A generous and characteristic tribute. Today the MRC has over 400 scientists, its staff have won 9 Nobel Prizes and several dozen FRSs!
This outstanding success owes much to the inspiring leadership and example of Perutz and he said: ".. creativity in science, as in the arts, cannot be organised. It arises spontaneously from individual talent. Well-run laboratories can foster it, but hierarchical organisation, inflexible, bureaucratic rules, and mountains of futile paperwork can kill it. Discoveries cannot be planned; they pop up, like Puck, in unexpected places."3

Perutz was an active populariser of science and gave lectures to a variety of audiences in many countries. A videotaped interview is available from the Vega Trust (www.vega.co.uk) and can be viewed on-line. He continued to work until he was taken ill, and his latest research was into neurodegenerative diseases, like Huntingdon's and Alzheimer's diseases.
He married Gisela Peiser in 1942 and is survived by her and two children, one of whom, Robin Perutz, is a distinguished chemist in his own right.
All the obituaries describe his human qualities - he was gentle, tolerant, appreciative of others. He didn't stand on his dignity and he often used to quote Albert Schweitzer: "Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing." One of his obituarists wrote: "A few minutes with him was enough to reveal a mind like a razor, an elegant command of language, and a quick-footed resilience that was driven by a sense of fun big enough to carry him through any adversity." 4 The life and work of Max Perutz is an outstanding example of a cultured, humane scientist who used his brilliance to illuminate and not to dazzle others.

References:
1. Obituary, The Times, 7/2/02
2. Ibid
3. Ibid, quotation from Perutz, M, I wish I'd made you angry earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity, OUP, 2002
4. Anthony Tucker, The Guardian, 7/2/2002

Sources:
You can read a brief biography and the 1962 Nobel lecture at the Nobel website www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1962/perutz-bio.html
At the same site is an article written by Max Perutz in July 1997 on the history of the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, with a number of fascinating photographs. This can be read at: www.nobel.se/medicine/articles/perutz/index.html
The LMBs own site has a short biography and details of his publications and VC: www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/Max_Perutz.html and profiles of all the LMB Nobel Laureates at http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/archive/Perutz62.html . In March César Milstein (Nobel Prize for Medicine 1984) also died.

A recent book looks at scientists who fled Nazi Germany, including Max Perutz: Hitler's Gift, Jean Medawar and David Pyke, Piatkus, 2001 (pb) - well worth reading.
PEC