Dr. Michael G. Rossmann was a world-renowned German-American structural biologist whose pioneering work transformed the field of macromolecular crystallography. He served as the Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University for an impressive 55 years, establishing himself as a towering figure in structural biology. Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1930, he immigrated to England in 1939 as World War II began, and later pursued physics and mathematics at the University of London. Rossmann earned his PhD in chemical crystallography from the University of Glasgow in 1956, where he studied under J. Monteath Robertson, and subsequently worked with William N. Lipscomb, Jr. at the University of Minnesota before joining Purdue University in 1964. His early career included significant contributions to the hemoglobin structure determination at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge under Max Perutz.
Dr. Rossmann's most groundbreaking achievement was leading the team that became the first to map the atomic structure of a human rhinovirus, the common cold virus, in 1985, a landmark accomplishment that revolutionized structural virology. He discovered the Rossmann fold, a conserved nucleotide binding motif that now bears his name and has been identified in hundreds of proteins worldwide. His development of the molecular replacement phasing technique fundamentally transformed structural biology, enabling approximately three-quarters of all protein structure determinations deposited in the Protein Data Bank. Rossmann pioneered innovative approaches combining crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to solve increasingly complex structures, including those of the dengue, West Nile, and Zika viruses, providing critical insights for vaccine and antiviral drug development. His mathematical and computational expertise allowed him to develop methods for detecting non-crystallographic symmetry, which dramatically advanced the field's ability to determine large molecular structures.
Beyond his scientific contributions, Dr. Rossmann was instrumental in building Purdue University's Department of Biological Sciences into a world-class center for structural biology, attracting researchers and advanced instrumentation from across the globe. His early adoption of computational approaches, beginning in the 1950s, positioned him as a visionary who recognized the transformative potential of high-performance computing for structural analysis, a legacy honored by Purdue's Rossmann supercomputer cluster. As a dedicated mentor, he trained generations of structural biologists who now lead laboratories worldwide, extending his intellectual influence throughout the scientific community. Dr. Rossmann's distinguished career earned him numerous prestigious accolades including election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize and the Gregori Aminoff Prize. His enduring legacy continues to shape structural biology and virology, with his methods and discoveries remaining foundational to modern research on viral pathogens and protein structure-function relationships.
