Question 1

True or false: Kendrew was an avid mountaineer who once climbed the Matterhorn in under four hours.

Accepted Answer

False. He enjoyed hiking but was not a competitive mountaineer. The Matterhorn claim is exaggerated; no record supports such a feat.

Question 2

True or false: Kendrew was also a trained concert pianist who performed with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Accepted Answer

False. He was a skilled pianist but never performed with the LSO. His main career was in molecular biology, not music.

Question 3

True or false: Kendrew's myoglobin model was built from hundreds of metal rods and plastic balls in a Cambridge lab.

Accepted Answer

True. He physically assembled a large-scale model using rods and balls to represent atoms, a painstaking process before computer graphics existed.

Question 4

True or false: John Kendrew was the first person to win a Nobel Prize for work done entirely on a single protein.

Accepted Answer

False. He shared the prize with Perutz, who worked on hemoglobin. Both were pioneers, but others later won for single proteins too.

Question 5

True or false: John Kendrew won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of myoglobin.

Accepted Answer

True. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Max Perutz for determining the first atomic structures of globular proteins, specifically myoglobin.

Question 6

True or false: Kendrew used X-ray crystallography to solve the structure of myoglobin, a feat considered impossible at the time.

Accepted Answer

True. He pioneered X-ray crystallography on proteins, overcoming massive computational challenges to reveal myoglobin's 3D shape in 1958.

Question 7

True or false: Kendrew served as a spy for British intelligence during World War II, working undercover in France.

Accepted Answer

False. He worked on radar and operational research for the RAF during WWII, not as a spy. No evidence links him to intelligence in France.

Question 8

True or false: Kendrew co-founded the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.

Accepted Answer

True. As a key advocate for European molecular biology, he helped establish EMBL in 1974 and served as its first director general.

John Kendrew Trivia Questions