Paul Sigler (1934 – 2000)

Paul Sigler came to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1964 as a Helen Hay Whitney fellow to work with Brian Matthews and David Blow on the structure of the proteolytic enzyme, α-chymotrypsin. The structure was solved in April 1967, just a few months before Paul left to take up a Professorship in the Biophysics Department in Chicago. Before coming to Cambridge, Paul had been a practising M.D. but also worked in the laboratories at NIH with David Davies on the structure of γ-chymotrypsin. Paul remained at Chicago from 1967 until 1989 when he moved to Yale University with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He also spent a sabbatical half-year at LMB in 1984. At Chicago and Yale, Paul and his colleagues solved the structures of many proteins and protein complexes. His work and life are described in greater detail in a number of obituaries, listed below, which were published in the months after he died.

Obituaries

• Nature, 403, 848 (2000) by Brian Matthews
• Cell, 101, 23-24 (2000) by Max Perutz
• Structure, Folding & Design, 8, R67-R68 (2000) by David Davies
• Nature Structural Biology 7, 271-272 (2000) by Richard Henderson
• Protein Science 9, 827-828 (2000) by Art Horwich & Andrzej Joachimiak