John Smith

John Derek Smith is a British Molecular Biologist who participated in many of the major discoveries at the LMB

Born Southampton, England 8 December 1924
Scientific staff, Agricultural Research Council Virus Research Unit, Cambridge 1945-59;
Research Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge 1949-52;
Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, University of California, Berkeley 1955-57;
Senior Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology 1959-62,
Member of Scientific Staff, LMB, Cambridge 1962-88

Sherman Fairchild Scholar 1974-75;
Head, Subdivision of Biochemistry, Cell Biology Division 1976-88
FRS 1976;

In 1955 he married Ruth Aney (marriage dissolved 1968); died Cambridge 22 November 2003.

He was one the very few scientists who understood the importance of nucleic acids before 1953. According to Nobel Laureate Sidney Altman

"John Smith was a venerable nucleic acids biochemist. He had worked on the nucleic acids of viruses long before coming to the MRC-LMB and was an expert on identification and characterization of nucleotides, much of it done on unlabeled material, detected by observing chromatographs under UV light. He is a quiet person but very lively in conversations about science.