Kenneth Holmes 1934 – 2021

Ken Holmes, LMB alumnus and friend, has died at the age of 86. He was a PhD student with Rosalind Franklin at Birkbeck College, London, and moved to the LMB alongside Aaron Klug in 1961. He continued the work of Rosalind and Aaron on the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and his work on insect flight muscle paralleled the work of Hugh Huxley studying the structure and function of vertebrate muscle. Ken was the first to find the crucial evidence that the myosin crossbridges in the thick filaments in muscle moved depending on the presence or absence of ATP. His work on muscle and TMV continued when he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in 1968, becoming Director of the Department of Biophysics in 1973. He remained in contact with many colleagues at the LMB, participating in events and inspiring conversations. In 2017, he published his biography of Aaron Klug – A Long Way from Durban – which was celebrated with a book launch at the LMB. More