Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Peter Main, who died on 3rd November 2024, was an innovative scientist and a brilliant teacher.Since the 1960s, Peter had helped transform our knowledge of chemistry and biochemistry, by providing computer software which revolutionized chemical crystallography.He later worked on density modification algorithms which helped solve many protein structures, as well as inspiring others to push these methods further.He was an outstanding teacher, always lucid and clear when explaining tricky crystallographic phenomena, and many of us who also worked in the field are deeply indebted to him for this.Peter was born in the small Northumbrian village of Newbiggin-by-the sea, an idyllic spot on the Northumbrian coast.(This maybe helps explain the delight he felt when he could escape into the countryside.)However, he was destined for academia.He studied Physics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and proceeded to do a PhD with Michael Woolfson, a theoretical crystallographer who had made important contributions to the principles underlying phase estimation for structurefactor observations, already labelled as 'direct methods for phase determination'.Peter's thesis covered more classical crystallographic material; he solved a 16-atom structure by Patterson methods and programmed various calculations, first in a language called Autocode, but later in the much more flexible Fortran language which would dominate early scientific software development.After his graduation he spent time as a postdoc in Purdue, Indiana, USA, working with Michael Rossmann.Michael had helped develop mathematical methods to use the information present due to non-crystallographic symmetry in protein crystallography, and already saw that this could help refine phases for highly symmetric molecules such as
Authors: Eleanor Dodson, Kathryn Cowtan
Institution: University of York
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404794235