Rodney Robert Porter

Who was Rodney Robert Porter?

Rodney Robert Porter, CH, FRS was an English biochemist and Nobel laureate.

Born in Newton-le-Willows, St Helens, Lancashire, England, Rodney Robert Porter received his Bachelors of Sciences degree from the University of Liverpool in 1939 for Biochemistry. He moved to the University of Cambridge where he became Fred Sanger's first PhD student. He was awarded his doctorate in 1948.

He worked for the National Institute for Medical Research for eleven years before joining St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, Imperial College London and becoming the Pfizer Professor of Immunology. In 1967 he was appointed Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Trinity College. His colleague Elizabeth Press worked with him at NIMR, St Mary's and at Oxford contributing extensively to the work which led to the Nobel Prize.

In 1972, Porter shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology with Gerald M. Edelman for determining the chemical structure of an antibody. Using the enzyme papain, he broke the blood's immunoglobin into fragments, making them easier to study. He also looked into how the blood's immunoglobins react with cellular surfaces.