Kenneth Charles HolmesFRS^[1] (19 November 1934 – 2 November 2021) was a British molecular biologist and a pioneer in usingsynchrotron X-ray radiation to study biology.^[2]

Holmes was born on 19 November 1934^[3] inHammersmith, London and attended theChiswick School in London. He entered University of Cambridge and studied atSt John's College, Cambridge, where he received a BA. He then returned to London and studied atBirkbeck College for his PhD on the structure of thetobacco mosaic virus, during which he worked withRosalind Franklin,Aaron Klug andJohn Finch. After a one-year postdoc research at theBoston Children's Hospital of theHarvard Medical School withDonald Caspar andCarolyn Cohen, Holmes moved to theLaboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge in 1962, where he became a research scientist in the group ofHugh Huxley until 1968. Holmes then moved toHeidelberg, where he established the Department of Biophysics at theMax Planck Institute for Medical Research. He remained a director there until his retirement in 2003. From 1975 and 1976, Holmes was acting head of theEMBL outstation, the Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory atDESY, Hamburg.^[4] After his retirement, Holmes became an "Emeritus Scientific Member" at theMax Planck Institute for Medical Research.

In 1981, Holmes was elected aFellow of the Royal Society,^[5] and was awarded their 1997Gabor Medal which is of silver gilt and then accompanied by 1,000 pounds^[6] "in recognition of his achievements in molecular biology, in particular his pioneering analyses of biological structures and viruses, and his development of the use of synchrotron radiation for X-ray diffraction experiments, now a widely used technique not only in molecular biology but in physics and materials science".^[7]

He was awarded both theEuropean Latsis Prize worth 100,000Swiss Francs in 2000 based on his work on "Molecular Structure", and the Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2001.^[8]

His scientific biography of SirAaron Klug, "Aaron Klug - A Long Way from Durban: A Biography" was published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press. In 2021, he received theLennart Philipson Award.^[9]

Holmes died on 2 November 2021, at the age of 86.^[10]

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