Laboratory of Molecular Biology after their formal retirement including: Max Perutz, following an undergraduate training in organic chemistry, left Austria in 1936 and came to the University of Cambridge to study for a PhD, joining the X-ray crystallographic group led by J.D. Bernal. Here, in the Cavendish laboratory, he started his lifelong work on hemoglobin. The death of Lord Rutherford led to his successor, Lawrence Bragg, a pioneer in X-ray crystallography, becoming the new Cavendish professor of physics in 1938. Bragg became a major supporter of Perutz and his group in those early days. After World War II, many scientists from the physical side
Cavendish Professor of Physics would cost £6,300. The then chancellor of the university, William Cavendish met that cost privately 18 months later, and named the department in honor of his relative, the 18th century natural philosopher Henry Cavendish. The first Cavendish Professor was the then relatively obscure James Clerk Maxwell, who had yet to complete the work that would make him the most renowned physicist of the nineteenth century. His appointment was announced on 8 March 1871, and despite initial disappointment at his being offered the place, his inaugural lecture was looked forward to by his likely students as well as his future colleagues.