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Notable People
Neil Isaacs
Chemist
A distinguished chemist who, with botanist Richard Cogdell, 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 Neil Isaacs:
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
Professor Neil Isaacs holds the Joseph Black Chair of Protein Crystallography. He has held this Chair since 1989.
Isaacs graduated BSc honours in Chemistry from the University of Queensland in 1967 and was awarded a PhD from there in 1970. From 1969-72 he was a Research Assistant at the University Chemical Laboratories, Cambridge. In 1972 he became an IBM Research Fellow (and Junior Research Fellow, Balliol) at Oxford where he worked in Dorothy Hodgkin's group. From 1976 he was an IBM World Trade Research Fellow at the IBM T J Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, in New York and held this position for a year. In 1977 he became SERC Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of York. A year later he moved to the University of Melbourne and became a University Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry. From 1979-89 he was NH & MRC Senior Research Fellow at St Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. He then moved to Glasgow in 1989 and was appointed to the Joseph Black Chair of Protein Crystallography.
He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1997.
His research is concerned with the determination of protein structures using single crystal X-ray diffraction methods in order to understand the biological function of the protein. Along with colleague Richard Cogdell, he has conducted seminal research into the structure and function of bacterial reaction centres and light-harvesting complexes.In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Degree by Nankai University as testament to his many achievements working in the fields of protein crystallography and structural biology.
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