Max Ferdinand Perutz was a British molecular biologist who was born in Austria. In 1962, he and the English biochemist John Kendrew shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the structure of haemoglobin, the iron-containing metalloprotein found in red blood cells. He used X-ray crystallography, which is the most powerful tool, to study the structure of haemoglobin, which moves oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body through blood cells and returns carbon dioxide to the lungs. He also studied how glaciers move and used crystallography to figure out how snow changes into glacial ice. He looked at how fast different parts of a glacier moved and found that the fastest flow was at the surface and the slowest flow was at the glacier’s base. He started the “Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology” in Cambridge, where fourteen Nobel laureates went on to work. He was the first chairman of the institute. The “Royal Society” of London gave him several awards, including the “Royal Medal” in 1971 and the “Copley Medal” in 1979. He was given many honors and awards, such as “Fellow of the Royal Society” (FRS) in 1954, “Commander of the Order of the British Empire” in 1963, and “Order of Merit” in 1988.
Childhood and Adolescence
Hugo Perutz and his wife Adele “Dely” Goldschmidt raised him in a Jewish home in Vienna, Austria, on May 19, 1914. His father came from a textile manufacturing family that introduced mechanized spinning and weaving to the Austrian monarchy.
Perutz was a devout Catholic who was baptized. In Vienna, he attended the ‘Theresianum,’ a public boarding school built by Empress Maria Theresia. Despite his parents’ wishes for him to pursue law, he became interested in chemistry after being encouraged by one of his school teachers.
He enrolled in the ‘University of Vienna’ to study chemistry after persuading his parents of his decision, and graduated in 1936.
When Professor Hermann Marks, who was due to visit Cambridge, learned of the advancements being made by English biochemist Gowland Hopkins at the ‘University of Cambridge,’ he asked Hopkins whether he would be interested in inducting him. Professor Marks, on the other hand, forgot about it and helped him join English scientist J.D. Bernal as a research student in the latter’s X-ray crystallography project.
He joined Bernal’s research group at Cambridge’s ‘Cavendish Laboratory,’ and despite initial difficulties with the new subject of crystallography, he quickly learned it. His father provided him with $500 in financial assistance.
Bernal prompted him to use the X-ray diffraction technique to analyze protein structure. He arranged for horse hemoglobin crystals and began his postgraduate doctoral research on their structure because protein crystals were difficult to come by.
Max Perutz’s Career
When Adolf Hitler conquered Austria in 1938, his parents fled to Switzerland and lost all of their assets, leaving Perutz financially dependent. In the summer of 1938, however, his understanding of crystals and mountaineering and skiing skills enabled him to join a team of three men to research the transformation of snow into ice in the Swiss Alps. His contribution to the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society’ demonstrated his glacier expertise.
Sir William Lawrence Bragg, a British physicist and X-ray crystallographer who was head of Experimental Physics at Cavendish at the time, recognized the potential in Perutz’s hemoglobin research and encouraged him to apply for a ‘Rockefeller Foundation funding to continue his research. Perutz accompanied his parents to England in March of 1939, after obtaining the grant on January 1, 1939.
Winston Churchill ordered people of Austrian and German ancestry, including Perutz, to be transferred to Newfoundland after the “Second World War” broke out. After being detained for several months, he returned to Cambridge.
Under Bragg’s supervision, he received his Ph.D. from the ‘University of Cambridge’ in 1940.
His reputation as a glacier specialist led to his induction into ‘Scheme Habakkuk,’ a British covert project to create an aircraft carrier out of pykrete — a mix of ice and wood pulp – to combat German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. He began his pykrete investigation in a hidden location beneath London’s ‘Smithfield Meat Market.’
Professor Bragg assisted him in gaining funding from the MRC in 1947, allowing him to establish the Molecular Biology Unit at the ‘Cavendish Laboratory.’ In October of that year, he was named head of the unit, and in March of the following year, he was named Chairman of the ‘Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology,’ a position he maintained until 1979.
Many scholars, including Nobel Laureates Francis Crick and James D. Watson, joined the new institution because they saw potential in the field of molecular biology.
He demonstrated in 1953 that it was feasible to phase diffracted X-rays from protein crystals by examining the configurations of protein crystals in the presence and absence of heavy atom attachment. In 1959, he used this method to determine the molecular structure of hemoglobin.
He and his coworkers conducted substantial studies after 1959 to determine the structure of oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin, and in 1970 proposed the method it acts.
He then looked at different hemoglobin disorders, their structural changes, and their impact on oxygen binding. Perutz predicted that the molecule may be made to function as a drug-receptor, which would likely limit or reverse genetic defects such as those seen in sickle cell anemia.
He also looked into how different species’ hemoglobin molecules adapt to diverse environments.
In his later years of work, he focused on structural changes in proteins linked to neurodegenerative illnesses including Huntington’s disease. He demonstrated that the amount of glutamine repeats that bind to form a ‘polar zipper,’ as he called it, is related to the onset of Huntington’s disease.
He contributed to the ‘New York Review of Books and the ‘London Review of Books in his later years. He published many volumes, including ‘Is Science Necessary?’ (1989) and ‘I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier’ (1998), all of which were edited by Perutz himself. In 1997, he was awarded the ‘Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize,’ an annual literary honor that “recognizes scientists as poets.”
Achievements and Awards
He and English biochemist John Kendrew were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962.
Personal History and Legacy
In 1942, he married medical photographer Gisela Clara Mathilde Peiser. She was a devout Christian.
Vivien, their daughter, was born in 1944, and Robin, their son, was born in 1949. He is a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the ‘University of York,’ where he was also the department chair. In 2010, Robin was named a “Fellow of the Royal Society.”
Perutz became an agnostic later in life, albeit respecting the religious beliefs of others.
He died of cancer on February 6, 2002, and his ashes were cremated on February 12 at the ‘Cambridge Crematorium’ (Cambridgeshire), after which they were interred alongside his parents in the ‘Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground’ in Cambridge.
Estimated Net worth
Max is on the list of the most popular and wealthiest biologists. Based on what we’ve found on Wikipedia, Forbes, and Business Insider, Max Perutz has a net worth of about $1.5 million.