Carol Robinson's eccentric research transformed the field of structural biology by studying proteins in the vapor phase, rather than as solutions or solids. His approach has proven to be of unpredictable value and offers new insight into protein interactions.
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Knowing the shape of proteins is crucial to our understanding of human health and to developing new drugs. To do this, current methods require the proteins to be dissolved in a solution or locked in a crystal lattice. These approaches are incredibly powerful and form the backbone of the field of structural biology as we know it. But what about the third phase? How would proteins survive once they pass the solid and solution phases and are released into the atmosphere?

While many scientists believed that proteins would no longer maintain their shape in the vapor phase, Carol Robinson began some eccentric research into the study of proteins moving freely within this phase. This work has proven to be of unpredictable value, and its gas-phase structural biology now offers new insight into the dynamic interactions between proteins, lipids, and drugs.

Dame Carol Robinson is a British chemist who works as a Royal Society Research Professor at the Laboratory of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

Carol is the first female professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford and was previously the first female professor of chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She is renowned for pioneering the use of mass spectrometry as an analytical tool and for her groundbreaking research into the 3D structure of proteins.

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