Henderson, Richard, 1945–, Scottish molecular biologist, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1969. Henderson has been a researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge since 1973. In 2017 he was awarded, with Joachim Frank and Jacques Dubochet, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work in developing cryo-electron microscopy, which permits the high-resolution determination of the structure of biomolecules in solution. It had long been believed that electron microscopes were unsuitable for imaging biological material because the electron beam is destructive. In 1990, however, Henderson successfully used the technology to produce a three-dimensional image of a protein at atomic resolution. Cryo-electron microscopy enables researchers to visualize previously unseen processes, advancing both the basic understanding of life's chemistry and the development of pharmaceuticals.
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