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Notable People
Richard Cogdell
Botanist
Born 1949.
An acclaimed botanist who, with chemist Neil Isaacs, conducted seminal research into the structure and function of bacterial reaction centres and light-harvesting complexes.
Connection to the University of Glasgow: Professor
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Achievements
The following achievement is associated with Richard Cogdell:
The light harvesting complex from photosynthetic bacteria.
The model of the light harvesting complex, the first of such protein structures to be determined in the UK, demonstrates how the photosynthetic bacteria capture and transmit energy from the sun.
Honours
The following honours are associated with this person:
Biography
Richard Cogdell holds the Hooker Chair of Botany and is also the Director of Glasgow Biomedical Research Centre. He joined the Botany Department in 1975 and became Head of the Department in 1987. He was a Titular Professor of Botany from 1988 before being appointed to the Hooker Chair in 1993.
Since the early 1970's he has been involved in research on bacterial photosynthesis. His work has increasingly focused on the early events of photosynthesis-light harvesting and energy transfer-and the structure and function of the pigment-protein complexes involved in these processes. Along with his colleague Neil Isaacs, he has conducted seminal research into the structure and function of bacterial reaction centres and light-harvesting complexes. He is now concentrating on using the information gained from his structural and functional studies on the purple bacterial pigment-protein complexes to devise ways of using solar energy to produce fuels.
He has received a number of awards and honours. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He received the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize in 1996 and the following year he was awarded the guest Lecturership of the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry at Meulheim on the Ruhr. In 2002 he received the Diawa/Adrian Prize for Anglo-Japanese Research. He was elected FRS in 2007 and FRSA in 2008.
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