Dan Brown was a nucleic acids chemist of the highest order, beginning with pioneering work under Lord Alexander Todd in the 1950s at University of Cambridge on chemical methods for synthesis of nucleosides and nucleotides. In 1982 he moved to the LMB and developed a method to prepare single-stranded DNA probes for detection of RNA sequences and worked on a novel automated device for oligonucleotide synthesis.  Dan’s Royal Society Biographical Memoir, written by Mike Gait, has just been published. More…