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Astbury and the α-helix

Nature Structural Biology volume 6, pages 210–211 (1999)Cite this article

It is now ~50 years since the discovery of the atomic structure of the α-helix by Linus Pauling. Like the other great helical structure in biology, the double helix of B-DNA, it was ultimately elucidated as much by a combination of inspired modeling coupled to sound stereo-chemical principles as by analysis of X-ray data derived from genuine biological material. Pauling's discovery also began the waning of the career of W.T. (Bill) Astbury, one of the founding fathers of X-ray diffraction studies whose data on keratin had defined the existence of the α-helix and provided the bulk of data for which Pauling's structure had to account.

Astbury was born in Langton, North Yorkshire in 1889, the son of a potter. He graduated in physics from Jesus College Cambridge in 1921 following service in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the first World War. He then went to work for Sir William Bragg at University College London and later at the Royal Institution. In 1926 he was asked by Bragg to prepare some X-ray diffraction photographs for a series of lectures entitled "On Common Things" thus introducing him to his life's work, the X-ray analysis of protein fibers. Two years later he moved to Leeds University as a Lecturer in textile physics and at Leeds he stayed for the rest of his life, becoming Professor of biomolecular structure there in 1946, a chair which now bears his name.

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Figure 1: Examples of Astbury's X-ray diffraction patterns from his 1949 "Studies of the structure of synthetic polypeptides"3.

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    Christopher Surridge

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Surridge, C. Astbury and the α-helix. Nat Struct Mol Biol 6, 210–211 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/6647

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