Richard Ambler

Ambler was born on 26 May 1933 in Bexleyheath, London to Anne Evans, a civil servant, and Henry Ambler, a state-employed chemist.[2] In 1940, the family moved to Pune, India, where Ambler's father conducted wartime explosives research.[1] Ambler later returned to England to attend boarding school at Haileybury, before heading to Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1954 to study natural sciences.[2] He remained at Cambridge to complete his PhD on bacterial proteins, under the tutelage of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Fred Sanger.[1] In 1963, Ambler published the first amino acid sequence of a bacterial protein, developing new methods of protein sequencing to determine the structure of the mitochondrial cytochrome c protein.[1] Cytochrome c remains an important object of study for modern biologists.[1]

In 1965, Ambler joined the newly created Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh. He began a longstanding research project on the increasing resistance of certain bacteria to penicillin and other antibiotics, making important discoveries related to bacterial gene transfer and enzyme development.[1] In particular, Ambler found that horizontal gene transfer played a key role in the development of antibiotic resistance.[1] He headed the Department of Molecular Biology between 1984 and 1990, helping to reorganize it into more specialized sub-departments, and became a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 1985.[2] He retired from the University of Edinburgh in the mid-1990s, and died in Edinburgh in December 2013.[2]

Ambler was married twice, first to roboticist Pat Waddington and later to Susan Hewlett. He was survived by two daughters, four step-daughters and seven grandchildren.[2] He had a keen interest in archeology, and was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.[1]

• University of Edinburgh obituary of Ambler