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Alexander Rich 1924–2015

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One of molecular biology's intellectual leaders, Alex Rich made fundamental discoveries concerning nucleic acids and ribosomes, which served not only as a foundation for modern biology but also spurred the field of biotechnology.

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Figure 1: Alex Rich at 17 years old.
Figure 2: The conference on the structures of proteins and nucleic acids at Caltech, Pasadena, Calif., which took place from the 21st to 25th of September, 1953, where Rich first met Crick.
Figure 3: Four not-so obscure members of the RNA Tie Club displaying natty neckwear in Francis Crick's home 'The Golden Helix' in Cambridge, UK, 1955.
Figure 4: The structure of tRNA.
Figure 5: The cover of 13 December issue of Nature in 1979 displaying the structure of Z-DNA.
Figure 6: A scientific meeting in Moscow, then the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S.-H. Kim and J. Rich for their input. Part of this obituary is adapted from Alex Rich's autobiography13.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shuguang Zhang is at the Center for Bits & Atoms of the Media Lab at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Shuguang Zhang

  2. Burghardt Wittig is at the Foundation Institute Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,

    Burghardt Wittig

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  1. Shuguang Zhang
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  2. Burghardt Wittig
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Correspondence to Shuguang Zhang or Burghardt Wittig.

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Zhang, S., Wittig, B. Alexander Rich 1924–2015. Nat Biotechnol 33, 593–598 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3262

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