John Kendrew

Sir John Cowdery Kendrew ( born March 24, 1917 in Oxford, † August 23 1997 in Cambridge ) was a British biochemist and molecular biologist.

He was awarded the 1962 Max Ferdinand Perutz, together with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Its merit lies among others in the development of molecular models. He explained the three-dimensional structures of myoglobin and hemoglobin on together with Perutz using the X-ray structure analysis.

From 1962 on, he was Deputy Director of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University and from 1974 to 1982 Head of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. In 1965, he was honored for his contributions to the elucidation of the protein structure of myoglobin with the Royal Medal of the Royal Society.

Kendrew was from 1965 a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.