About Olga Kennard
Olga Kennard, Lady Burgen (née Weisz; 23 March 1924 – 1 March 2023) was a Hungarian-born British scientist who specialised in crystallography. She was the founder of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Kennard's research focused on determining the structures of organic molecules, including the first three-dimensional structure of adenosine triphosphate and particularly the different forms of DNA. Together with JD Bernal she believed in the value of collating scientific data in a central archive, this began the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), collating crystal structures of mainly organic molecules. Kennard was also involved, at CSD, in the founding of the Protein Data Bank, and of the EMBL nucleotide sequence data library (later, European Nucleotide Archive). == Early life and education == Kennard was born in Budapest, Hungary on 23 March 1924, to Joir and Catherina Weisz. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 15 with her family in the face of growing antisemitism in Hungary. In the UK she was educated at Hove County School for Girls and Prince Henry VIII Grammar School, Evesham. She attended Newnham College, Cambridge, studying Natural Sciences at a time when women did not formally receive a degree. She went on to gain an MA in 1948. == Career == Following her studies, Kennard worked as a research assistant at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge from 1944 to 1948, working with Max Perutz on the structure of hemoglobin.
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