Tom Steitz 1940 – 2018

    Tom Steitz was an over-towering figure in X-ray crystallography. In 2000, together with Peter Moore he solved and interpreted the structure of the 50S subunit of the ribosome of Haloarcula marismortuis, a salt-loving archaebacterium living in the Dead Sea. For his part in the elucidation of ribosome structure he received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Ada Yonath and Venki Ramakrishnan, who both focused on the small ribosomal subunit of T. thermophilus. Tom was just a few days older than I. My memories...