David Mervyn Blow

David Mervyn Blow (27 June 1931 – 8 June 2004) was an influential British biophysicist. He was best known for the development of X-ray crystallography, a technique used to determine the molecular structures of tens of thousands of biological molecules. This has been extremely important to the pharmaceutical industry.

Blow was born in Birmingham, England. As a youth, he attended Kingswood School in Bath, England, where he won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He then spent two years at MIT and the National Institutes of Health. In 1954 he met Max Perutz, and they began to study a new technique wherein X-rays would be passed through a protein sample. This eventually led to the creation of a three-dimensional structure of haemoglobin. He became professor of biophysics at Imperial College London in 1977. Fellow of the Royal Society in 1972.

Blow married Mavis Sears in 1955, and they had two children. Blow died of lung cancer at the age of 72, in Appledore, England.

Further reading

• Alice Vrielink (2005). "David Mervyn Blow". Physics Today 58 (3): 88–89. Bibcode 2005PhT....58c..88V. doi:10.1063/1.1897573. 

External links

• Biography in the New York Times
• Biography in the Guardian