Aaron Klug

Sir Aaron Klug OM PRS (August 11, 1926 – November 20, 2018) was a Lithuanian-born British chemist and biophysicist.

Klug won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing crystallographic electron microscopy and working out the structure of nucleic acid-protein complexes.

Biography
Klug was born in Želva, Lithuania to Jewish parents. The family moved to South Africa when he was two. Klug graduated with a degree in science at the University of Witwatersrand and studied crystallography at the University of Cape Town before moving to England, completing his doctorate at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1953.

He moved to Birkbeck College, University of London, in late 1953, and started working with Rosalind Franklin in John Bernal's lab. This experience aroused a lifelong interest in viruses. During his time there he worked on the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus.

In 1962 he moved to the newly built MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Klug used methods from X-ray diffraction to develop crystallographic electron microscopy. In this method, two-dimensional images of crystals taken from different angles are combined to make three-dimensional images of the target. He worked out the structure of important nucleic acid-protein complexes.

Between 1986 and 1996 he was Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and was knighted in 1988. He was elected President of the Royal Society, and served from 1995–2000. He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 1990. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1995.

Klung died on November 20, 2018 in Cambridge at the age of 92.

 References 

Further reading

 this book is all about the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.
 Aaron Klug tells his life story at Web of Stories
Aaron Klug biography at the Nobel Foundation
Aaron Klug interviews with Harry Kroto
Aaron Klug article   by Bob Weintraub.
 The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
 Aaron Klug interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 11 December 2007 (film) 
 Listen to an oral history interview with Aaron Klug – a life story interview recorded for National Life Stories  at the British Library

Category:1926 births
Category:2018 deaths
Category:British biophysicists
Category:British chemists
Category:British Nobel Prize winners
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society
Category:Members of Academia Europaea
Category:Jewish British academics
Category:Jewish British scientists
Category:Jewish Nobel Prize winners
Category:Knights Bachelor
Category:Lithuanian Jews
Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
Category:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners
Category:Order of Merit
Category:South African Jews
Category:Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners