James Naismith (chemist)
Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford
James Henderson Naismith (born 26 July 1968) is a Scot, Professor of Structural Biology and since autumn of 2023 the Head of the Mathematical, Physical, and Life Science Division (MPLS) Division at the University of Oxford. He is also currently Vice-President (non-clinical) of The Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of Jesus College. He was the acting and inaugural Director (2017-2023) of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and Director of the Research Complex at Harwell. He served as Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of St Andrews. He was a member of Council of the Royal Society (2021-2022) and the Vice-Chair of Council (2022-2024) of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser.
Education
Naismith was named after James VI and I. He was educated at Hamilton Grammar School. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh where he received a first class Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1989. He won a Carnegie Scholarship to work under the supervision of Bill Hunter, John R. Helliwell and David Garner at the University of Manchester where he received his PhD in 1992 for research into the chemical structure of Concanavalin A and Zinc aldolase. In 2016 he was awarded a Doctor of Science (DSc) by the University of St Andrews.
Career and research
Following his PhD, Naismith did postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as a NATO Fellow in the laboratory of Stephen Sprang.
The public source identifies “James Naismith (chemist)” as professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around James, Naismith and chemist.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17507299. VIAF identifies the subject as 5116154923707463780002. The Library of Congress control number is n2018188899. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2023, 2017 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Naismith (chemist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.