New Master of St John's College, Cambridge Talks About Inspiration and Learning. (January 9, 2005)

    Richard Perham got his PhD at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge in 1964, immediately joined the Cambridge department of biochemistry, and became head of department in 1985 retiring last year. He is the new master of St John's College.

Recently he told Nature that in the 60s "With money around, one could do all sorts of things," and recalled the start of his work on self-assembling structures, multifunctional proteins and macromolecular complexes. "It was a more rosy future than young people perceive now," and he went on to say that Cambridge and the MRC labs were "a lively place, a lot of fun, [while] at the same time, I was impressed by people's dedication to research."

St John's new master singled out two MRC researchers, who between them garnered three Nobel Prizes, as being inspiring individuals for him, Max Perutz, an early mentor and Fred Sanger^{1, 2}  who instilled in him the drive  to choose projects that didn't have obvious solutions.

Perham also emphasised that it's crucial, for group leaders to learn from their students and postdocs. "One goes to a lot of trouble to recruit the brightest and best, and it would be silly not to recognize that they have very acute minds."

Currently while he continues to pursue research interests he told Nature that  his new concern as master of St John's is to raise funds for scholarships and bursaries. If getting his chance at Cambridge was "lucky", he is determined to spread that luck around to as many bright young hopefuls as possible.