It became part of the Wellcome Trust's collection for £250,000
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John Desmond Bernal
John Desmond Bernal was an Irish scientist who pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal wrote popular books on science and society. He was a communist activist and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
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science · Irish scientist, pioneer of X-ray crystallography in biology (1901–1971) · physicist · philosopher · inventor · university teacher · philosopher of science · crystallographer · biophysicist · writer · historian · naturalist · also John Desmond Bernal, J. D. Bernal, Desmond Bernal, John Bernal, Bernal
Born 10 May 1901 · Died 15 September 1971 · Q168362
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2007· 1 entry
1971· 2 entries
Died 1971-09-15.
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“If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?”
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1962· 1 entry
Won Royal Society Bakerian Medal (1962).
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1953· 1 entry
Awarded International Stalin Prize for Peace (1953).
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1947· 1 entry
Awarded Guthrie Lecture (1947).
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1945· 2 entries
Won Royal Medal (1945).
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The Guthrie lecture in 1947, the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, the Grotius Gold Medal in 1959 and the Bakerian Lecture in 1962
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1939· 2 entries
Bernal published The Social Function of Science, probably the earliest text on the sociology of science
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Bernal joined the Ministry of Home Security, where he brought in Solly Zuckerman to carry out the first proper analyses of the effects of enemy bombing and of explosions on animals and people
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1937· 1 entry
Bernal became Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, a department that had been brought to the first rank by Patrick Blackett
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1936· 1 entry
And started the work on haemoglobin that would occupy him most of his career
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1934· 1 entry
Took the first X-ray photographs of hydrated protein crystals using the trick of bathing the crystals in their mother liquor, giving one of the first glimpses of the world of molecular structure that underlies livin
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1929· 2 entries
Forcing a radical change of thinking among sterol chemists
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Which was later refined as Island One by Dr
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1927· 2 entries
And was not renewed until 1933, and he may have lost his card again shortly afterward
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Was appointed as the first lecturer in Structural Crystallography at Cambridge, becoming the assistant director of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1934
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1924· 1 entry
Determined the structure of graphite (the Bernal stacking describes the registry of two graphite planes) and also did work on the crystal structure of bronze
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1922· 1 entry
Which he followed by another year of natural sciences
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1919· 1 entry
Went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with a scholarship
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1901· 1 entry
Born 1901-05-10.
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