Adriaan "Ad" Bax (born 1956) is a Dutch-American molecular biophysicist. He was born in the Netherlands and is the Chief of the Section on Biophysical NMR Spectroscopy at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

. He is known for his work on the methodology of biomolecular NMR spectroscopy.

Biography

Bax was born in the Netherlands. He studied at

Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...

where he got his

engineer's degree An engineer's degree is an advanced academic degree in engineering which is conferred in Europe, some countries of Latin America, North Africa and a few institutions in the United States. The degree may require a thesis but always requires a non-a ...

(Ir. degree) in 1978, and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in applied physics in 1981, after spending considerable time working with

Ray Freeman Raymond Freeman FRS (6 January 1932 – 1 May 2022) was a British chemist and professor at Jesus College, Cambridge who made important contributions to NMR spectroscopy. Education Freeman was educated at Nottingham High School where he won an ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. He worked as a postdoc with Gary Maciel at

Colorado State University Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a public land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University System. Colorado State University is classified among "R1: ...

, before joining the NIH's Laboratory of Chemical Physics in 1983. In 1994 he became correspondent of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. He is currently the Chief of the Section on Biophysical NMR Spectroscopy at NIH. In 2002 he was elected a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in the section on Biophysics and computational biology and a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. Bax was awarded the 2018

NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "to recognize authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the cours ...

and the 2018

Welch Award in Chemistry The Welch Award in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Robert A. Welch Foundation, based in Houston, Texas, to encourage and recognise basic chemical research for the benefit of mankind. The award, which has been given since 1972, is one of the ...

Work in NMR spectroscopy

Bax works in the field of biomolecular NMR spectroscopy, and has been involved in the development of many of the standard methods in the field. He collaborated extensively with fellow NIH scientists Marius Clore, Angela Gronenborn and Dennis Torchia in the development of multidimensional

protein NMR Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of proteins (usually abbreviated protein NMR) is a field of structural biology in which NMR spectroscopy is used to obtain information about the structure and dynamics of proteins, and also nucleic acids, and ...

. Bax is a pioneer in the development of

triple resonance experiments Triple resonance experiments are a set of multi-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) experiments that link three types of atomic nuclei, most typically consisting of 1H, 15N and 13C. These experiments are often used to assign ...

and technology for resonance assignment of isotopically enriched proteins. He was also heavily involved in the development of using

residual dipolar coupling The residual dipolar coupling between two spins in a molecule occurs if the molecules in solution exhibit a partial alignment leading to an incomplete averaging of spatially anisotropic dipolar couplings. Partial molecular alignment leads to an in ...

s and

chemical shift In nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the chemical shift is the resonant frequency of an atomic nucleus relative to a standard in a magnetic field. Often the position and number of chemical shifts are diagnostic of the structure of ...

s for determining

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) are nucleic acids. Along with lipids, proteins, and carbohydra ...

and

protein structure Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule. Proteins are polymers specifically polypeptides formed from sequences of amino acids, the monomers of the polymer. A single amino acid monomer ma ...

s. Much of his recent work focuses on the roles of proteins in membranes. He was the world's most cited chemist over two decades (1981-1997).

Work during COVID-19 pandemic

Using laser light scattering, Bax examined how speech-generated droplets and aerosols may be a dominant

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...

transmission mode that may be mitigated by wearing face coverings or face masks.

References

External links

Oral History interview transcript for Ad Bax on 16 March 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and ArchivesLab Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bax, Ad 1956 births Living people Dutch biochemists Dutch biophysicists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Delft University of Technology alumni People from Moerdijk Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Nuclear magnetic resonance Dutch emigrants to the United States Bijvoet Medal recipients