Biography - Michael G. Rossmann (1930 – 2019)

Michael G. Rossmann
Michael Rossmann was a giant in macromolecular crystallography. During his 55-year career at Purdue University, he discovered the Rossmann fold, a common motif that he recognized in nucleotide binding proteins. He and his research group determined the structure of the human rhinovirus (common cold virus) in 1985. Using a combination of crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy, the group published the structures of the dengue virus and the zika virus. He pioneered new methods in crystallography to solve these large structures, such as high-performance computing, molecular replacement techniques, and non-crystallographic symmetry averaging.

See the video of the Rossmann Memorial Session at the 2019 ACA Annual Meeting for more information on his ground-breaking career.  

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