Hugh Esmor Huxley (1924–2013)

Abstract

Hugh Huxley on the Boston North Shore. Hugh Esmor Huxley was born on February 25th, 1924 and raised in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England. He gained admittance to Christ’s College Cambridge in 1941 and studied physics. Britain was at war; Hugh elected to interrupt his studies and join the Royal Air Force, working on the development of radar. He was honored for his substantial contributions by being awarded membership of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). Hugh returned to Cambridge in 1947, his enthusiasm for nuclear physics irrevocably diminished by the horrors of Hiroshima. For his doctoral research at the Cavendish Laboratory, rather than pursue nuclear physics Hugh joined Max Perutz’s group working on the X-ray analysis of crystalline proteins, where he became John Kendrew’s first research student. Hugh had come across Dick Bear’s X-ray diffraction patterns from air-dried muscle and, moreover, was amazed to discover no one really knew how muscle works. Hugh set about building an X-ray camera and X-ray generator capable of resolving spacing of 300–400 A to take diffraction photographs of wet “living” muscle. He saw for the first time the equatorial reflections arising from a hexagonal array of filaments and somewhat prophetically guessed that these arose from filaments of myosin on the hexagonal lattice points, with actin filaments in between. Hugh also suggested the filaments were linked by “cross bridges.” In 1952 Hugh went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a postdoctorate scholar in Frank Schmitt’s department to learn electron microscopy. Soon, Hugh’s tranverse sections of fixed muscle showed the arrangement of filaments he had postulated from his X-ray studies, together with a hint of cross-bridges connecting the filaments. The arrival of Jean Hanson at MIT provided further impetus. Jean was experienced in phase-contrast microscopy. The units of … [↵][1]1E-mail: holmes{at}mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1