David Mervyn Blow: a scholar and a gentleman (1931–2004)

My association with David Blow (photograph ca 1967), which was a pivotal step in my career, was due more to good luck than good management. As a PhD student in Australia working in`small molecule' crystallography, I had written to Max Perutz asking about the possibility of doing postdoctoral work in his laboratory and was very excited to be accepted. My wife and I arrived in Cambridge in November 1963, the same week that President Kennedy had been assassinated. The Union Jack over the Medical Research Council laboratory was ¯ying at half-mast, an extraordinarily rare sign of respect under any circumstances, let alone for a non-citizen. When I introduced myself to Perutz he indicated that, since we had ®rst corresponded, two other postdoctoral associates had already joined his group. If I still wanted to work with him I would be free to do so, he said, but at the same time he strongly urged me to consider the possibility of joining another group within the MRC laboratory. David Blow's group was one such possibility. I was aware that David had several publications in protein crystallography but the only article of his that I had read with any care was the notèTo ®t a plane to a set of points by least squares'. It is possibly his least-quoted publication but one which was relevant to my thesis project. I was, however, immediately taken with David's personality and sensed that we would get on well together. Furthermore, Michael Rossmann, who had been David's long-standing collaborator, was about to assume a new position at Purdue University. Also his technician, Barbara Jeffery, was about to move to the Boston area. I had little hesitation in joining David's group. Paul Sigler was to join six months later, technically as a PhD student although with substantial prior experience in David Davies' laboratory and as a practising MD