The decades following World War II saw an increase in using physical methods to solve biological problems, which led to a greatly increased knowledge of living systems. John Kendrew's contribution to this trend was formulating the first three-dimensional structure of the protein myoglobin by using x-ray crystallography. For this achievement he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for chemistry with his colleague Max Perutz, who had done similar work with hemoglobin.

John Cowdery Kendrew was born in Oxford, England, on March 24, 1917, the only child of Wilfrid and Evelyn Sandberg Kendrew. His father was a lecturer in climatology, and his mother was an art historian; thus he was nurtured in an academic atmosphere. He attended the Dragon School in Oxford and finished his secondary schooling at Clifton College in Bristol. He matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied chemistry and graduated in 1939.

His academic career was interrupted by World War...