21 Facts About Louise Johnson

Louise Johnson was David Phillips Professor of Molecular Biophysics at the University of Oxford from 1990 to 2007, and later an emeritus professor.

Louise Johnson was married to Pakistani nuclear physicist and a Nobel Prize-laureate Abdus Salam.

Louise Johnson's mother had read biochemistry and physiology at University College London in the 1930s and was supportive of Johnson's decision to pursue a scientific career.

Louise Johnson went to University College London in 1959 to read Physics and coming from an all-girls school, she was surprised to find herself one of only four girls in a class of 40.

Louise Johnson took theoretical physics as her third-year option and graduated with a 2.1 degree.

Louise Johnson was impressed by the work taking place there and in 1962 she moved to the Royal Institution to do a PhD in biophysics.

Louise Johnson then moved onto the study of the substrate binding to the protein lysozyme and was part of the team, that discovered the structure of the enzyme lysozyme; this was the third protein structure ever solved by x-ray crystallography, and the first enzyme.

Louise Johnson was able to combine teaching with independent research and continued her work on lysozyme and new crystal studies on other enzymes.

Louise Johnson began a detailed x-ray crystallographic analysis of the protein, which was eight times larger than lysozyme and much larger than any of the other proteins whose structures had been solved at that time.

Louise Johnson became an Additional Fellow of the college and the Janet Vaughan Lecturer.

Louise Johnson was now able to expand her team of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.

Louise Johnson's research was directed towards understanding the molecular basis of the biological properties of control and catalytic mechanism.

Louise Johnson's team used the bright x-ray source generated at the Synchrotron Radiation Source at Daresbury, which provided data that could not be obtained with the home source.

Louise Johnson was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003.

Louise Johnson was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

Louise Johnson received a number of honorary degrees, including: Hon DSc University of St Andrews, 1992; Hon DSc University of Bath, 2004; Hon DSc Imperial College London, 2009; Hon DSc University of Cambridge, 2010.

Louise Johnson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990; an Associate Fellow of the Third World Academy of Science, 2000; a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, 2011.

Louise Napier Johnson was born on 26 September 1940 at South Bank Nursing Home, Worcester, as the second of three daughters of George Edmund Johnson, a wool broker then serving in the Royal Air Force, and his wife, Elizabeth Minna, nee King.

Louise Johnson married the Pakistani theoretical physicist Abdus Salam in 1968.

Louise Johnson later shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for his work on electroweak unification.

Louise Johnson died on 25 September 2012 in Cambridge, England, one day before her 72nd birthday.