Biography:Aaron Klug

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Short description: British biophysicist and chemist (1926–2018)
Sir

Aaron Klug

OM FRS FMedSci HonFRMS
Aaron Klug 1979.jpg
Aaron Klug in 1979
Born(1926-08-11)11 August 1926
Želva, Lithuania
Died20 November 2018(2018-11-20) (aged 92)
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
NationalityBritish
Education
Known forCrystallographic electron microscopy
Spouse(s)
Liebe Bobrow (m. 1948)
ChildrenTwo
Awards
  • Fellow of the Royal Society (1969)
  • Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (1981)
  • Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1982)
  • Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1984)
  • Copley Medal (1985)
  • Hon FRMS (1985)[1]

Knighted 1988
OM 1995

President of the Royal Society 1995–2000
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisThe kinetics of phase changes in solids (1953)
Doctoral advisorDouglas Hartree[2]
Websitewww2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/about-lmb/archive-and-alumni/alumni/aaron-klug/

Sir Aaron Klug OM FRS FMedSci HonFRMS (11 August 1926 – 20 November 2018) was a British biophysicist and chemist. He was a winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes.

Early life and education

From right to left: Prince Claus of the Netherlands, Aaron Klug and his wife Liebe Bobrow, 1979

Klug was born in Želva, in Lithuania, to Jewish parents Lazar, a cattleman, and Bella (née Silin) Klug, with whom he emigrated to South Africa at the age of two. He was educated at Durban High School. Paul de Kruif's 1926 book, Microbe Hunters, aroused his interest in microbiology.[3]

Klug was part of the Hashomer Hatzair Jewish Zionist youth movement in South Africa.[4][page needed][better source needed]

He started to study microbiology, but then moved into physics and maths, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. He studied physics under Reginald W. James and obtained his Master of Science degree at the University of Cape Town.[5] He was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851,[3] which enabled him to move to England, completing his PhD in research physics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1953.[6]

Career and research

Following his PhD, Klug moved to Birkbeck College in the University of London in late 1953, and started working with virologist Rosalind Franklin in the lab of crystallographer John Bernal. This experience aroused a lifelong interest in the study of viruses, and during his time there he made discoveries in the structure[7] of the tobacco mosaic virus. In 1962 he moved to the newly built Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge. Over the following decade Klug used methods from X-ray diffraction, microscopy and structural modelling to develop crystallographic electron microscopy in which a sequence of two-dimensional images of crystals taken from different angles are combined to produce three-dimensional images of the target. He studied the structure of transfer RNA, and found what is known as zinc fingers as well as the neurofibrils in Alzheimer's disease.[8]

Also in 1962, Klug became a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was later made an Honorary Fellow of the College.[5]

Between 1986 and 1996, Klug was director of the LMB. He served[when?] on the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.[9] He also served[when?] on the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute.[10] He and Dai Rees approached the Wellcome Trust to found the Wellcome Sanger Institute, which was a key player in the Human Genome Project.[8]

Awards and honours

Klug was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1981. He was knighted by Elizabeth II in 1988.[11] In 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS),[12] the oldest national scientific institution in the world. He was elected its President (PRS) from 1995 to 2000. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1995 – as is customary for Presidents of the Royal Society. His certificate of election to the Royal Society reads:

Klug was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[14] and the American Philosophical Society[15]

In 2000, Klug received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[16] In 2005, he was awarded South Africa's Order of Mapungubwe (gold) for exceptional achievements in medical science.[17] He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), also in 2005.[18]

In 2013, Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev dedicated their centre for structural biology in Klug's name, Aaron Klug Integrated Centre for Biomolecular Structure. He, his family and the then-British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, were in attendance. Klug was associated with the university and the town of Be'er Sheva, having visited them numerous times.[19][3]

Personal life

Klug married Liebe Bobrow in 1948;[5] they had two sons, one of whom predeceased them in 2000.[3] He died on 20 November 2018 in Cambridge.[20]

Though Klug had faced discrimination in South Africa, he remained religious and according to Sydney Brenner, he became more religious in his older age.[21]

See also

  • List of presidents of the Royal Society
  • List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

  1. ↑ "Honorary Fellows". http://www.rms.org.uk/membership/honorary-fellows.html. 
  2. ↑ Aaron Klug at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Ferry, Georgina (26 November 2018). "Sir Aaron Klug obituary" (in en). https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/26/sir-aaron-klug-obituary. 
  4. ↑ Shur, Chaim (1998). Shomrim in the land of Apartheid : the story of Hashomer Hatzair in South Africa 1935–1970. Givat Haviva: Members of Hashomer Hatzair South Africa and Havazelet in conjunction with Yad Yaari. ISBN 965-7014-17-4. OCLC 41871384. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41871384. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Anon (2015). ",". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U23297. https://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U23297.  (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  6. ↑ Klug, Aaron (1953). The kinetics of phase changes in solids (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. ProQuest 301283484.
  7. ↑ Amos, L.; Finch, J. T. (2004). "Aaron Klug and the revolution in biomolecular structure determination". Trends in Cell Biology 14 (3): 148–152. doi:10.1016/j.tcb.2004.01.002. PMID 15003624. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Watts, Geoff (2018). "Aaron Klug". The Lancet 392 (10164): 2546. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)33109-X. 
  9. ↑ "Advisory Council of the Campaign for Science and Engineering". Sciencecampaign.org.uk. http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/about/who/advisory.htm. 
  10. ↑ "Scripps Research Scientific Board Meets in Florida". Scripps Research Institute. 26 January 2004. https://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20040126/board.html. 
  11. ↑ "Aaron Klug (1926–)". Jewish Virtual Library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/klug.html. 
  12. ↑ "Sir Aaron Klug OM FRS". London: Royal Society. https://royalsociety.org/people/aaron-klug-11759/. 
  13. ↑ "Certificate of Election EC/1969/19: Aaron Klug". London: Royal Society. https://collections.royalsociety.org/DServe.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=show.tcl&dsqSearch=(RefNo==%27EC%2F1969%2F19%27. 
  14. ↑ "Aaron Klug" (in en). https://www.amacad.org/person/aaron-klug. 
  15. ↑ "APS Member History". https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Aaron+Klug&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced. 
  16. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". American Academy of Achievement. https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration. 
  17. ↑ "National Orders awards 27 September 2005". State of South Africa. 29 September 2005. http://www.info.gov.za/aboutgovt/orders/2005/klug.htm. 
  18. ↑ "Sir Aaron Klug – The Academy of Medical Sciences". https://acmedsci.ac.uk/fellows/fellows-directory/ordinary-fellows/sir-aaron-klug. 
  19. ↑ "Aaron Klug Integrated Centre for Biomolecular Structure and Function Dedicated" (in en). Be'er Sheva. 14 April 2013. http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/news/klug_2013.aspx. 
  20. ↑ Rhodes, D. (2019). "Aaron Klug (1926–2018)". Nat Struct Mol Biol 26 (2): 85–86. doi:10.1038/s41594-018-0183-9. PMID 30664739. 
  21. ↑ Hargittai, Istva'n & Magdolna. 2006. Candid Science VI: More Conversations with Famous Scientists. Imperial College Press, p. 33

Further reading

External links

Professional and academic associations
Preceded by
Michael Atiyah 		58th President of the Royal Society
1995–2000 		Succeeded by
Robert May



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