| Frank H Allen | |
| Birth Name: | Frank Harmsworth Allen |
| Birth Date: | 6 1944 df=y[1] |
| Birth Place: | Reading |
| Resting Place: | Histon and Impington Cemetery |
| Fields: | Crystallography |
| Workplaces: | University of British Columbia Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre |
| Alma Mater: | Imperial College London |
| Thesis Title: | X-ray structural studies of some biologically significant molecules |
| Thesis Url: | https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/17130 |
| Thesis Year: | 1968 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Donald Rogers |
| Known For: | Innovative data handling at CCDC |
| Awards: | See list |
| Spouse: | Sandra J Newman |
| Children: | 3 |
Frank Harmsworth Allen FRSC CChem (1944 - 2014) was an internationally recognised crystallographer.[2]
Frank Harmsworth Allen was born in 1944 in Reading, Berkshire and raised in Pangbourne, a village 6 miles away and close to the River Thames. He was the only child of George W Allen and Gwendolen Retta (née Whittamore).
He gained a First in chemistry and a PhD in crystallography at Imperial College London, and in 1968 moved to Vancouver to take up a post-doctoral fellowship, working with James Trotter[3] at the University of British Columbia.[4] Before long, they had established the structure and conformation of thalidomide.[5]
A little earlier, in the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Olga Kennard had founded the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. She invited Frank Allen to join the group. He began in 1970, becoming Scientific Director and then executive director before retiring in 2008 and taking on the role of Emeritus Research Fellow. Initially, in his new role at Cambridge, Allen turned his attention to data and data processing, using the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). He worked with W D Samuel Motherwell and others “to write the programs that turned the CSD from a data library into a scientific instrument”.[2]
Robin Taylor, CCDC Emeritus Research Fellow, noted thatHe also had a dry sense of humour:
Frank married Sandra J Newman (Sandy) in 1966. They had three children: Ashley, Andrew and Stuart. Ashley was killed in a road accident in 1988, aged 20.
Frank Harmsworth Allen died on 10 November 2014. His funeral took place on the 27th at St Andrew's, Histon.[2] He was then buried at Histon and Impington (Mill Road) Cemetery.[8]