Prof. em. Dr. Timothy J. Richmond

Tim Richmond joined the faculty of the ETH Zurich October 1, 1987 as full Professor for the X-ray Crystallography of Biological Macromolecules.

He was born in Corvallis, Oregon and attended school in Seattle, Washington and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He received his B. S. degree in Biochemistry from Purdue University, Indiana and his Dr. Phil. in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics from Yale University, Connecticut, U. S. A. In 1978, he joined the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, U. K. as a post-doctoral fellow, and was tenured as a senior staff scientist there in 1984 before taking his current position with the ETH Zurich. He has received a number of honors including the Max Perutz Prize, the Johnson Award, and the Louis-Jeantet Prize.

The interests of Prof. Richmond in teaching and research are primarily devoted to the recognition and assembly of biological macromolecular complexes. X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy and other biophysical and biochemical techniques are employed by his laboratory. The focus of his research is on the organization of DNA in chromosomes and the regulation of gene expression in higher organisms. His laboratory has elucidated the structures of the nucleosome core particle and various transcription factor complexes. Their work on the nucleosome core particle, the fundamental repeating unit of chromatin, resulted ultimately in its atomic description at 1.9 å resolution. They have since determined the organization of nucleosomes in the chromatin fiber.