Associated Press · Public domain

Max Perutz spent over two decades working out the molecular structure of haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in blood, using X-ray crystallography to solve a molecule far larger and more complex than anything decoded before it. The Austrian-born biochemist shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Kendrew for the achievement, and the Cambridge laboratory he founded and chaired for seventeen years, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, has since produced fourteen more Nobel laureates.