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Obituary
Bob Bray
Emeritus Professor Bob Bray, who
died on 17 August at the age of 73, was an internationally renowned biochemist
who specialised in molybdenum bioinorganic chemistry.
Educated at Cambridge, Bob came to
Sussex in the early 1970s as a reader and was awarded a personal chair 20 years
later. He also served as Subject Chair for Biochemistry for many years. Bob
retired in 1994 but continued to be active in research and publication and gave
a paper at a conference in Oxford only days before his death.
Since the 1950s Bob had worked on
enzymes containing molybdopterin and can be called the "father of the field",
according to Dr Ben Adams in BIOLS, who worked closely with him. "He was a
great scientist, and one of the few 'hard' biochemists who was very early on
aware of the power of using a genetic approach in combination with biophysical
methods," said Ben.
According to Professor Ray Richards
from CPES, who also collaborated with Bob for many years, his particular
strength was the use of EPR spectroscopy in the study of molybdenum enzymes.
Professor David Lowe was one of
Bob's doctoral students and published extensively with him both at Sussex and
after leaving for the University of East Anglia. He said that Bob had an
"encyclopaedic knowledge of his field" and described him as "a meticulous
experimenter".
Mick Henry, a technician in CPES,
agreed: "I was always struck by his thoroughness, professionalism and deep
dedication to the work he carried out."
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Friday 31 August 2001
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