Dr Steve Rigby (BSc, DPhil) - personal details

Despite being lousy at school biology (and good at physics) I managed to graduate in biochemistry (BSc Hons) from Queen Mary College London in 1983. Having been inspired by lectures on magnetic resonance by Prof Ed Randall at Queen Mary, and having also developed interests in enzymes and electron transfer, I then moved to the Agriculture and Food Research Council’s Nitrogen Fixation Unit (later Nitrogen Fixation Laboratory) at the University of Sussex (Brighton) for my D. Phil., ‘NMR and Nitrogen Fixation’, supervised by Prof Barry Smith. I employed NMR spectroscopy (and a bit of EPR spectroscopy) to study the nitrogenase metalloenzymes and the flavodoxins that transfer electrons to them. I furthered my studies of paramagnetic metalloproteins in 1986 when I took my first postdoctoral position at the University of East Anglia working chiefly on magnetic resonance studies of haem proteins with Prof Geoff Moore and Prof Andy Thomson. I was a founder member of the original SERC Centre for Metalloprotein Spectroscopy and Biology (CMSB) at the UEA. In 1989 I got the opportunity to work on protein NMR with Prof Iain Cambell, and briefly with Prof R. J. P. 'Bob' Williams, in the Biochemistry Department at Oxford. Even though no paramagnetic electrons were involved I took that opportunity. However, I couldn't stay away from electrons for long. In 1991 I began the final phase of my postdoctoral career at University College London, working with Profs Mike Evans and Jonathan Nugent. Here I was instrumental in setting up the first electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) spectrometer in London (and the second such in the UK) while working on radicals in higher plant and bacterial photosystems. I also had access to the first pulsed EPR system to be installed in the UK, in Prof Mike Evans' laboratory. In 1995 I got a 'proper job' and moved back across London to Queen Mary College again, where I was appointed Lecturer in Biochemistry and subsequently Senior Lecturer in 2003. While at Queen Mary I began collaborating with Prof Martin Warren and Prof Nigel Scrutton, who was then at Leicester University. These became long-term collaborations on enzyme mechanism and dynamics that survived Martin's subsequent move to the University of Kent and Nigel's move to Manchester. Having helped establish the most well equipped biological EPR laboratory in the UK at Queen Mary, I followed Nigel to Manchester in 2008 as Reader in Biological EPR Spectroscopy and set up a new lab in the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB). I continue to enjoy research collaborations with Martin and Nigel, but now have the Manchester Molecular Enzyymology Group (MMEG) as collaborators too, particularly Profs Andy Munro and David Leys. Despite my advancing age I have endeavoured to make an experimental contribution to every paper on which I appear as an author, in addition to an intellectual contribution. That's what makes the job fun!