Kiyoshi Nagai

Kiyoshi Nagai studied at Osaka University, obtaining his PhD under Hideki Morimoto, whose group worked on the mechanism of haemoglobin by varying the chemistry of the haem group.

Although he had worked for over 30 years at the LMB in Cambridge, England, Kiyoshi was very well-known around the world. He was invited to work in Cambridge in the early 1980s by Max Perutz, who recognised Kiyoshi would make an excellent group leader, who led his group from the bench. His enormous contribution to haemoglobin research led to large commercial developments and much of what we now understand about the evolution of the molecule. Since the early 1990s Kiyoshi focused more on the processing of RNA, and many of his ground-breaking studies appeared in Nature and Science. Kiyoshi was always ready to take up new methods and technology, and never lost his love of doing experiments. He was a very gentle, generous and modest man, much loved by everyone who knew him. Kiyoshi had been suffering from liver cancer for some months, but chose to slip away quietly rather than cause a fuss. He is irreplaceable.

Kiyoshi died on Friday, September 27th, 2019.