Walter Gratzer, a biophysical chemist who renowned for his popular science writing, died on October 20 at the age of 89.
Grazter was born on September 20, 1932 in a town called Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) according to an obituary from King’s College London written by cell biologist Simon Hughes, a colleague of Gratzer’s at the university. In 1939, Gratzer and his Jewish family moved to Great Britain due to increasing safety concerns. In 1951, he started an undergraduate program in chemistry at Oxford University, and after earning his degree in 1954, he joined the Royal Air Force, and served for several years.
Gratzer then pursued his doctorate by researching hemoglobin proteins at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill in London. After receiving the degree in 1960, he crossed the Atlantic to research the biochemistry of nucleic acids at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was ...
