John desmond bernal biography of donald

British physicist. His pioneering work in the field of X-ray crystallography enabled the structure of many complex molecules to be elucidated. Bernal came from an Irish farming family. Brought up as a Catholic, he was educated at Stonyhurst and Cambridge, where he abandoned Catholicism and became an active member of the Communist Party. When he returned to Cambridge in he planned a research programme to reveal the complete three-dimensional structure of complex molecules, including those found exclusively in living organisms, by the techniques of X-ray crystallography.

In Bernal succeeded in obtaining photographs of single-crystal proteins and went on to study the tobacco mosaic virus. It was not, however, Bernal's own achievements in crystallography, as much as those of his pupils and colleagues, such as Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz, that brought about the revolution in biochemistry and launched the subject of molecular biology.

In Bernal was appointed professor of physics at Birkbeck College, London. His attempts to develop the department were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Despite his known membership of the Communist Party, and against the advice of the security forces, Bernal spent much of the war as adviser to Earl Mountbatten.

John Desmond Bernal FRS

In he returned to Birkbeck College and in was appointed to a chair of crystallography. In the same year he suffered a stroke and although he continued to work for some time, a second and more severe stroke in paralysed him down one side and virtually ended Bernal's scientific life. View all related items in Oxford Reference ». Search for: 'J.

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