Frederic M. Richards

Frederic Middlebrook Richards (August 19, 1925 – January 11, 2009), commonly referred to as Fred Richards, was an American biochemist and biophysicist known for solving the pioneering crystal structure of the ribonuclease S enzyme in 1967 and for defining the concept of solvent-accessible surface. He contributed many key experimental and theoretical results and developed new methods, garnering over 20,000 journal citations in several quite distinct research areas. In addition to the protein crystallography and biochemistry of ribonuclease S, these included solvent accessibility and internal packing of proteins, the first side-chain rotamer library, high-pressure crystallography, new types of chemical tags such as biotin/avidin, the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shift index, and structural and biophysical characterization of the effects of mutations. Richards spent his entire academic research career at Yale University, where he became Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in the department that he created and chaired, "one of the major centers in the world for the study of biophysics and structural biology". He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences USA and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received many other scientific awards. He served as head of the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research and was elected as president both of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and of the Biophysical Society. Personal biography Richards was born on August 19, 1925, in New York City to George H. Richards and Marianna Middlebrook Richards. Both parents were from old New England families who had settled in Fairfield and New London, Connecticut, in the 1600s. The family usually spent summers in Connecticut, giving Richards an early affinity for the area which continued through his career at Yale University. He had two older sisters, Marianna and Sarah. Marianna became a biochemist, and was a significant role model for Fred, who delighted in the smells and explosions produced by chemistry sets in that era. He attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy, and later recalled that "the excellent science department even permitted certain students the unsupervised run of the laboratories outside of class hours. This attitude played a strong role...