Bill Rutherford

Alfred William Rutherford FRS[2] is Professor and Chair in Biochemistry of Solar energy in the Department of Life sciences at Imperial College London.[4][8][9]

For other people called William Rutherford, see William Rutherford.

Bill Rutherford
Bill Rutherford in at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2014
Born
Alfred William Rutherford

(1955-01-02) 2 January 1955[1]
Morpeth, Northumberland[1]
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisElectron paramagnetic resonance studies of photosynthetic electron transport in purple bacteria (1979)
Doctoral advisorMichael C.W. Evans[5][6][7]
Websiteimperial.ac.uk/people/a.rutherford

Education

Rutherford was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School for Boys, Morpeth[1] and the University of Liverpool where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry in 1976.[1] He moved to University College London (UCL) where he was awarded a PhD in 1979 for electron paramagnetic resonance studies of photosynthetic electron transport in purple bacteria[5][6][7][10] supervised by Michael C.W. Evans.

Research

Rutherford's research[11][12][13][14][15][16][17] investigates:

the water oxidising enzyme Photosystem II in terms of its mechanism, its assembly and its evolutionary relationships with other photosynthetic reaction centres. This enzyme has become the focus of attention because cheap water splitting catalysts are urgently needed in the energy sector for solar fuel production, electrolysis of water and the reverse reaction in fuel cells. My research has made major contributions to understanding this enzyme before it was either popular or profitable. Now that it is finally becoming both of those, I hope to continue to do more of the same. Not just because it might contribute to solving aspects of the energy crisis but also because understanding the enzyme, which put the energy into the biosphere, the oxygen into the atmosphere and thence changed the planet, is one of the greatest challenges in biology and chemistry. It is also a fun enzyme to work on.[4]

Rutherford's research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC),[18] the Wolfson Foundation and the Royal Society.[2][19]

Awards and honours

Rutherford was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. His nomination reads:

Bill Rutherford has made seminal contributions that provided deep insights into the structure and function of photosynthetic reaction centres, in particular Photosystem II (PSII). He was the first to propose that PSII had the same basic structure as the simpler, non-oxygenic purple bacterial reaction centre. This key conceptual change became accepted thanks to his important experimental contributions. He went on to discover key features of PSII that differentiate it from other reaction centres. The current understanding of PSII owes a great deal to his incisive experiments and thinking.[2]

Rutherford has also been awarded the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Médaille d'argent of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 2001 and was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2001.[4] On 25 January 2013 Rutherford received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden.[20]

Personal life

Rutherford is a musician and has been a member of The Baskervilles Blues Band[21][22] and Baskerville Willy.[23][1]

References
  1. "RUTHERFORD, Prof. Alfred William, (Bill)". Who's Who. ukwhoswho.com. 2015 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription or UK public library membership required) (subscription required)
  2. Anon (2014). "Professor Bill Rutherford FRS". London: royalsociety.org. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 11 November 2016. Retrieved 9 March 2016.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. Rutherford, A. W.; Faller, P (2003). "Photosystem II: Evolutionary perspectives". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 358 (1429): 245–53. doi:10.1098/rstb.2002.1186. PMC 1693113. PMID 12594932.
  4. Rutherford, Bill (2014). "Professor Bill Rutherford, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Life Sciences". Imperial College London. Archived from the original on 14 March 2017.
  5. Rutherford, A. W.; Evans, M. C. W. (1979). "A high potential semiquinone-iron type EPR signal in Rhodopseudomonas viridis". FEBS Letters. 100 (2): 305–308. doi:10.1016/0014-5793(79)80357-9. S2CID 83568090.
  6. Rutherford, A. W.; Evans, M. C. W. (1979). "The high potential semiquinone-iron signal in Rhodopseudomonas viridis is the specific quinone secondary electron acceptor in the photosynthetic reaction centre". FEBS Letters. 104 (2): 227–230. doi:10.1016/0014-5793(79)80820-0. S2CID 84417573.
  7. Rutherford, A. W.; Heathcote, P; Evans, M. C. (1979). "Electron-paramagnetic-resonance measurements of the electron-transfer components of the reaction centre of Rhodopseudomonas viridis. Oxidation—reduction potentials and interactions of the electron acceptors". The Biochemical Journal. 182 (2): 515–23. doi:10.1042/bj1820515. PMC 1161333. PMID 228655.
  8. List of publications from Microsoft Academic
  9. Bill Rutherford's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  10. Rutherford, Aflred William (1979). Electron paramagnetic resonance studies of photosynthetic electron transport in purple bacteria. london.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of London. OCLC 500554060.
  11. Hanley, J; Deligiannakis, Y; Pascal, A; Faller, P; Rutherford, A. W. (1999). "Carotenoid oxidation in photosystem II". Biochemistry. 38 (26): 8189–95. doi:10.1021/bi990633u. PMID 10387064.
  12. Un, S.; Atta, M.; Fontecave, M.; Rutherford, A. W. (1995). "G-Values as a Probe of the Local Protein Environment: High-Field EPR of Tyrosyl Radicals in Ribonucleotide Reductase and Photosystem II". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 117 (43): 10713–10719. doi:10.1021/ja00148a013.
  13. Rutherford, A. W. (1989). "Photosystem II, the water-splitting enzyme". Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 14 (6): 227–32. doi:10.1016/0968-0004(89)90032-7. PMID 2669240.
  14. Rutherford, A. W.; Krieger-Liszkay, A (2001). "Herbicide-induced oxidative stress in photosystem II". Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 26 (11): 648–53. doi:10.1016/s0968-0004(01)01953-3. PMID 11701322.
  15. Boussac, A; Zimmermann, J. L.; Rutherford, A. W. (1989). "EPR signals from modified charge accumulation states of the oxygen evolving enzyme in Ca2+-deficient photosystem II". Biochemistry. 28 (23): 8984–9. doi:10.1021/bi00449a005. PMID 2557913.
  16. Cardona, T.; Sedoud, A.; Cox, N.; Rutherford, A. W. (2012). "Charge separation in Photosystem II: A comparative and evolutionary overview". Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Bioenergetics. 1817 (1): 26–43. doi:10.1016/j.bbabio.2011.07.012. PMID 21835158.
  17. Thapper, A.; Styring, S. R.; Saracco, G.; Rutherford, A. W.; Robert, B.; Magnuson, A.; Lubitz, W.; Llobet, A.; Kurz, P.; Holzwarth, A.; Fiechter, S.; De Groot, H.; Campagna, S.; Braun, A.; Bercegol, H.; Artero, V. (2013). "Artificial Photosynthesis for Solar Fuels – an Evolving Research Field within AMPEA, a Joint Programme of the European Energy Research Alliance". Green. 3. doi:10.1515/green-2013-0007.
  18. Anon (2014). "UK Government research grants awarded to Alfred William Rutherford". rcuk.ac.uk. Swindon: Research Councils UK. Archived from the original on 14 March 2017.
  19. Faunce, Thomas A.; Lubitz, Wolfgang; Rutherford, A. W. (Bill); MacFarlane, Douglas; Moore, Gary F.; Yang, Peidong; Nocera, Daniel G.; Moore, Tom A.; Gregory, Duncan H.; Fukuzumi, Shunichi; Yoon, Kyung Byung; Armstrong, Fraser A.; Wasielewski, Michael R.; Styring, Stenbjorn (2013). "Energy and environment policy case for a global project on artificial photosynthesis". Energy & Environmental Science. 6 (3): 695. doi:10.1039/c3ee00063j. ISSN 1754-5692.
  20. "New honorary doctorates in science and technology – Uppsala University, Sweden". uu.se. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  21. Baum, Harold (1995). Biochemists' Song Book. qub.ac.uk. CRC Press. ISBN 0748404163. OCLC 191661780. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  22. Anon (2015). "Baskervilles Blues Band". baskervillesbluesband.com. Archived from the original on 14 March 2017.
  23. Anon (2015). "Baskerville Willy: the Blues, but not as we know it". baskervillewilly.com. Archived from the original on 10 August 2015.
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