Kenneth Charles Holmes FRS (1934 – 2 November 2021) was a British molecular biologist. He was born in Hammersmith, London. He was a former colleague of Rosalind Franklin at Birkbeck College with Aaron Klug and John Finch and moved to the

Laboratory of Molecular Biology The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...

, Cambridge in 1962. From 1975 and 1976 he was acting Head of Outstation, EMBL Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at DESY, Hamburg. He worked at the

Max Planck Institute for Medical Research The Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, is a facility of the Max Planck Society for basic medical research. Since its foundation, six Nobel Prize laureates worked at the Institute: Otto Fritz Meyerhof (Physiology), R ...

as an "Emeritus Scientific Member". In 1981, he was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

, and was awarded their 1997

Gabor Medal The Gabor Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "acknowledged distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines". The medal was created in 1989 to honor the memory of physicist Denni ...

which is of silver gilt and then accompanied by 1,000 pounds "in recognition of his achievements in molecular biology, in particular his pioneering analyses of biological structures and viruses, and his development of the use of synchrotron radiation for X-ray diffraction experiments, now a widely used technique not only in molecular biology but in physics and materials science". He was awarded both the European Latsis Prize worth 100,000

Swiss Francs The Swiss franc is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is also legal tender in the Italian exclave of Campione d'Italia which is surrounded by Swiss territory. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) issues banknotes and the f ...

in 2000 based on his work on "Molecular Structure", and the Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2001. His scientific biography of Sir Aaron Klug, "Aaron Klug - A Long Way from Durban: A Biography" was published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press. In 2021, he received the Lennart Philipson Award. Holmes died on 2 November 2021, at the age of 86.

References

1934 births 2021 deaths Academics of Birkbeck, University of London Fellows of the Royal Society British molecular biologists People from Hammersmith Scientists from London {{UK-biologist-stub