Hugh Huxley

Hugh Huxley
Hugh Huxley
Born	February 25, 1924
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Molecular Biologist
Known for	Myosin Muscle Actin

Hugh Esmor Huxley FRS (born February 25, 1924) is a British biologist. He is professor of biology at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States.

He received his PhD from Christ's College, Cambridge. He is most noted for his study of the structure of muscle. In the 1950s he was one of the first to use electron microscopy to establish the sliding filament model for muscle contraction, involving the sliding between actin filaments and myosin filaments in striated skeletal muscle. Subsequently, he has continued to increase our understanding of muscle structure, using electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction methodologies. Much of his research uses frog muscle as a model system. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1960 and awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1971. He also won one of its Royal Medals in 1977 and its Copley Medal in 1997. He also received the Franklin Medal in 1990.

Professor Huxley is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Books

• John Finch; 'A Nobel Fellow On Every Floor', Medical Research Council 2008, 381 pp, ISBN 978-1840469-40-0; this book is all about the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.

External links

• Brandeis bio
• The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
• Hugh Huxley talk: "How Muscle Contracts"