Rodney Robert Porter

Rodney Robert Porter, FRS (8 October 1917 – 6 September 1985) was an English biochemist and Nobel laureate.

Born in Newton-le-Willows, St Helens, Lancashire, England, Rodney Robert Porter received his Bachelors of Sciences degree from the University of Liverpool in 1939 for Biochemistry. He moved to the University of Cambridge where he became Fred Sanger's first PhD student. He was awarded his doctorate in 1948.

He worked for the National Institute for Medical Research for eleven years (1949–1960) before joining St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, Imperial College London and becoming the Pfizer Professor of Immunology. In 1967 he was appointed Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford.

In 1972, Porter shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology with Gerald M. Edelman for determining the chemical structure of an antibody. Using the enzyme papain, he broke the blood's immunoglobin into fragments, making them easier to study. He also looked into how the blood's immunoglobins react with cellular surfaces.

In 1991, Prof. Raymond Dwek founded the Oxford Glycobiology Institute at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford and this building was named after Porter as the Rodney Porter building.

He died in a road accident near Winchester, Hampshire and is survived by his wife and five children.