Record

Authorised form of name	Rossmann; Michael George (1930 - 2019)
Dates	1930 - 2019
Nationality	American
Place of birth	Frankfurt, Germany
Date of birth	30/07/1930
Place of death	West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
Date of death	14/05/2019
Occupation	Physicist
Research field	Microbiology
	Biochemistry
	Biophysics
	Crystallography
Activity	Education: University of London, BSc and MSc;University of Glasgow, PhD (1956) Career: Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Minnesota (1956); Research Associate, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge (1958); Associate Professor (1964), Professor (1967), Hanley Distinguished Professor (1978), Department of Biological Sciences Purdue University; Director of Purdue X-ray Crystallography laboratory; Division of Biological Sciences, Cornell University; School of Medicine, Indiana University Memberships: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978); National Academy of Sciences (1984); American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999)
Membership category	Foreign Member
Date of election	14/03/1996
Age at election	65
Relationships	Attributed his initial interest in crystallography to Kathleen Lonsdale FRS, whom he heard speak as a schoolboy. Worked with Max Perutz FRS on sturcture of hemoglobin
OtherInfo	Michael Rossmann was a physicist and microbiologist who was the first to map the structure of the virus that causes the common cold in humans at an atomic level. He also discovered a structure that is widely found in nucleotide-binding proteins and is named after him — the Rossmann fold. Early in his career, Michael played a pivotal role in discovering the structure of haemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting protein found in red blood cells. His work then focused on investigating the structure of viruses and their proteins, with his discoveries suggesting a shared origin for plant and animal viruses. In his later work, Michael showed that the dengue virus changes shape when it enters its host, indicating that vaccines should mimic a virus’s shape in the body. Using cryo-electron microscopy, in 2016 his lab reported the first known structure of the Zika virus, responsible for a severe epidemic at the time. Michael was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He won many awards for his work on the cold virus, including the Canada Gairdner International Award, presented for outstanding contributions to medical science. Professor Michael Rossmann ForMemRS died on 14 May 2019.
Source	Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rossmann
Virtual International Authority File	http://viaf.org/viaf/7663512
Code	NA4710

Archives associated with this Fellow

RefNo	Title	Date
IM/003894	Rossmann, Michael George	1984/5
EC/1996/45	Rossmann, Michael George: certificate of election to the Royal Society	1994
AP/82/14	Supporting data, regarding 'The structure of haemoglobin VIII. A three-dimensional Fourier synthesis at 5.5 Å resolution: determination of the phase angles' and 'The structure of haemoglobin. IX. A three-dimensional Fourier synthesis at 5.5 Å resolution: description of the structure' by Ann F Cullis, Hilary Muirhead, Max Ferdinand Perutz, Michael George Rossmann and A C T North	[1961-1962]

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