Biophysicist and Nobel laureate Sidney Altman died following a long illness on April 5 at age 82.
Altman was originally interested in physics until a grim outlook on career options caused him to shift focus to biophysics. He completed a postdoc in England, where he became acquainted with molecular biology giants Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner while working on transfer RNA.
As a professor at Yale, he studied RNase P, an enzyme that cuts RNA. He found that the enzyme requires RNA to work, revealing previously unknown catalytic function. It had previously been assumed that only protein complexes were able to act as enzymes. In 1989, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery.
Neuroscientist Colin Blakemore died on June 27 after suffering from motor neuron disease. He was 78.
Blakemore studied the physiology behind depth perception and spatial awareness at the University of Oxford. This ...
