Archives Menu

Aaron Klug

Aaron Klug is a chemist and biophysicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. After completing his BSc at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, he attended the University of Cape Town on scholarship where he received an M.Sc. degree. In 1949 he moved to Cambridge in England, he studied the molecular structure of steel and wrote a thesis on the changes that occur when molten steel solidifies, for which he earned a Ph.D. in 1952.

In 1953 he obtained a fellowship to work at Birkbeck College in London, where he met Rosalind Franklin. They worked together to determine the structural nature of the tobacco mosaic virus. After Franklin’s death in 1958, he continued his work on viruses together with Kenneth Holmes and John Finch. In 1962 he accepted a position at Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

His major contribution to scientific research was the development of crystallography electron microscopy for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.

Learn more

photo of Aaron Klug