Donald Caspar facts for kids

Donald L. D. Caspar (born January 8, 1927 – died November 27, 2021) was an American scientist. He was a structural biologist, a term he actually created! He was famous for studying the tiny structures of living things. He especially focused on the tobacco mosaic virus.

Caspar was a professor at the Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University. He also taught biology at the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center at Brandeis University. He made big discoveries in how viruses work. He also helped us understand how to see their tiny parts using special techniques. These include X-ray crystallography and electron diffraction.

Early Life and Education

Donald Caspar finished his first degree in physics in 1950. He studied at Cornell University. Later, he went to Yale University and earned his PhD in biophysics in 1955. His main teacher there was Ernest C. Pollard.

His PhD project was about the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). He wrote a paper called The Radial Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Before getting his degree, he worked at the California Institute of Technology. There, he was a research student with Max Delbrück. He also worked closely with James D. Watson for many years.

Work with Rosalind Franklin

After getting his PhD, Caspar moved to England. He received a special scholarship to work at King's College London. From 1955 to 1956, he worked with Rosalind Franklin at Birkbeck College in London.

Working together was very successful for both of them. Caspar became one of Franklin's closest friends. In 1956, they both published important papers in the science journal Nature. Their research showed that the tobacco mosaic virus was a hollow tube, not a solid one. They also discovered that the RNA inside the virus was wrapped along its inner surface. Franklin helped Caspar a lot with writing his paper.

Caspar-Klug Theory

At Birkbeck, Caspar also worked with Aaron Klug. They continued to work together throughout their careers. In 1962, they came up with an important idea called quasi-equivalence. This idea helped explain how proteins are arranged on the surface of icosahedral viruses.

The Caspar-Klug theory has been very important in studying viruses. It also helps us understand other large biological structures. Their first ideas came from looking at viruses with electron microscopes. Now, with more advanced tools like crystallography, we can see viruses in even more detail. This helps us understand how proteins interact with each other. The idea of quasi-equivalence is still a key part of how scientists think about these complex structures.

Awards and Recognition

Donald Caspar received several important awards for his scientific work:

• In 1994, he was given a Guggenheim Fellowship.
• He became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Also in 1994, he was chosen as a member of the Biophysics and Computational Biology section of the National Academy of Sciences.
• In 2000, he received the first Fellow of the Biophysical Society Award.