Richard Henderson (biologist)

Richard Henderson is distinguished for his contributions to protein crystallography, where X-rays are used to determine the structure of molecules. Richard was the first to solve the structure of bacteriorhodopsin, a protein found in the membrane of a cell. Henderson also studied the digestive enzyme chymotrypsin, contributing to our understanding of its mode of action.

Henderson began working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge in 1973, and was its Director from 1996-2006. His awards include the 1999 Gregori Aminoff Prize, which he received together with neuroscientist Nigel Urwin.

Together Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution”.