Summary of Perutz biography by Georgina Ferry

I have now finished tracing the origins of false beliefs about protein crystallization. It seems that J. D. Bernal and the young Max Perutz in 1946 decided to create the impression that proteins in crystals did not contact each other or exert forces on each other. They needed to do this in order to win support for Perutz and his project. At the time the prevailing expert opinion was that globular proteins were very soft, perhaps even partially liquid. Protein chemists were well aware that most globular proteins in solution were readily denatured by very minor changes in the chemical or physical environment and would have argued that crystallization was bound to affect structure. This decision to discount expert opinion created a silo in which protein x-ray crystallography could survive and eventually flourish but at the expense of consistency with the rest of physics. The biography of Max Perutz by Georgina Ferry (2007) contains enough detail about the personality, circumstances, talents and limitations of Perutz to enable understanding of subsequent events. Click here to view summary notes from the book.