David Mervyn Blow (27 June 1931 – 8 June 2004) was an influential British biophysicist. He was best known for the development of X-ray crystallography, a technique used to determine the molecular structures of tens of thousands of biological molecules. This has been extremely important to the pharmaceutical industry. Early life and education Blow was born in Birmingham, England. He was educated at Kingswood School in Bath, Somerset and the University of Cambridge where he won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His PhD was awarded in 1958 for X-ray analysis of haemoglobin supervised by Max Perutz. Career and research Following graduation from Cambridge, Blow spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded by the Fulbright Foundation In 1954, he met Max Perutz; they began to study a new technique wherein X-rays would be passed through a protein sample. This eventually led to the creation of a three-dimensional structure of haemoglobin. Blow was appointed professor of biophysics at Imperial College London in 1977. His doctoral students include Richard Henderson, Paul Sigler, and Alice Vrielink. Awards and honours Blow was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1972. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1987. Personal life Blow married Mavis Sears in 1955, and they had two children, a son Julian and a daughter Elizabeth. He died of lung cancer at the age of 72, in Appledore, Torridge (near Bideford), Devon. References 1931 births 2004 deaths Academics of Imperial College London Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Deaths from lung cancer in England English biophysicists Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Institute of Physics Members of the French Academy of Sciences People educated at Kingswood School, Bath People from Birmingham, West Midlands Wolf Prize in Chemistry laureates Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Deans of the Royal College of Science Presidents of the British Crystallographic Association