Kendrew, Sir John Cowdery (1917-1997), a British molecular biologist, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for chemistry with fellow British molecular biologist Max Perutz. Through a technique known as X-ray crystallography, the two scientists traced the structure of hemoglobin and myoglobin. These are two proteins found in the blood and muscles of human beings and animals.
Kendrew was born on March 24, 1917, at Oxford, England. He attended Cambridge University. He directed the molecular biology laboratory at Cambridge from 1946 to 1975. Kendrew was knighted in 1974. He died on Aug. 23, 1997.
