Rodney Robert Porter

Education and early life

Born in Newton-le-Willows, St Helens, Lancashire, England, Rodney Robert Porter received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Liverpool in 1939 for Biochemistry. He moved to the University of Cambridge where he became Fred Sanger's first PhD student. He was awarded his doctorate in 1948.

Career and research

Porter worked for the National Institute for Medical Research for eleven years (1949–1960) before joining St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, Imperial College London and becoming the Pfizer Professor of Immunology. In 1967 he was appointed Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. His colleague Elizabeth Press (Betty Press) worked with him at NIMR, St Mary's and at Oxford contributing extensively to the work which led to the Nobel Prize.

Awards and honours

Porter was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1964. He won the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1966. In 1972, Porter shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology with Gerald M. Edelman for determining the chemical structure of an antibody. Using the enzyme papain, he broke the blood's immunoglobin into fragments, making them easier to study. He also looked into how the blood's immunoglobins react with cellular surfaces. He subsequently worked with colleagues Kenneth BM Reid, Robert Sim and Duncan Campbell on developing understanding of the Complement Proteins associated with defence against infection.

In 1991, Raymond Dwek founded the Oxford Glycobiology Institute at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford and this building was named after Porter as the Rodney Porter building.

Death

Porter died in a road accident at Winchester.