Kim Sung-Hou

Kim Sung-Hou Ph.D. is a Korean-born American crystallographer and protein biophysicist. Dr. Kim reported first 3D structure of tRNA with A. Rich in 1973. He also published many papers on the structures of protein molecules including Ras. He is a member of U.S. National Academy of Science since 1994. He is currently a professor and a senior scientist at chemistry department of U.C. Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory(LBL), respectively.

Controversy over structure of tRNA
Therer had been some intense competition among several groups worldwide for solving the 3D structure of tRNA during sixties and early seventies. Final round of that was between MIT's Rich group and Aaron Klug's group at Cambridge. Dr. Kim first published 4Å structure in Science in 1973. Next year his group came up with 3Å structure. But from Klug group's argument, after a symposium held in June 1974, where Kim's group arguably heard the different results of Klug's experiment, they rewritten and published revised paper on 3Å structure within a month in Science, which was two weeks before Klug's publishment in Nature on 3Å structure. Klug complained to Francis Crick, who wrote the letters to A. Rich concerning the accusations. However, Rich denied the scientific misconduct.

Biographical information

 * Born 1937, South Korea
 * B.S.(1960), M.S.(1962) in chemistry, Seoul National University, South Korea
 * Ph.D(1966) University of Pittsburgh
 * Research Associate M.I.T. (1966-70) under A. Rich
 * Senior Research Scientist M.I.T. (1970-72) with A. Rich
 * Faculty of Biochemistry, Duke University School of Medicine (1972-78)
 * Professor, University of California, Berkeley (1978- )