Page 176 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Neutrons for Science
immediately and see François Jacob and speak to him. Though very nervous, for he had a reputation of being very cold, I did this straightaway. There, in front of me François Jacob telephoned the minister for foreign affairs, (Maurice Schumann), who told him that France had just promised Germany to support the Heidelberg site. Kendrew told me he would do everything so that there
would at least be an outstation in Grenoble to promote the use of neutrons in biology. The early work in structural biology using neutron diffraction had been performed in Brookhaven by one
of his former students, Benno Schoenborn. This work clarified
the structure determined by Kendrew, who was convinced of
the usefulness of neutrons in biology. He held his promise,
and in 1976 the Grenoble outstation was in operation led by Andrew Miller, a biophysicist from Oxford, and the collaboration between the laboratory and the ILL has proved very successful. Since its inception the area of laboratory space has doubled, and there is a project with the ILL and ESRF to further enlarge this outstation whose usefulness has further increased since the start of production of the intense X-rays of the ESRF. [2018 addition: The Carl-Ivar Brändén Building, inaugurated in 2006, now hosts the Partnership for Structural Biology and the Deuteration lab. This building also hosted the Partnership for Structural Biology (the UVHCI), from 2007 to 2015.]
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