Henry John Woods

Who was Henry John Woods?

Henry John Woods was a British molecular biologist who worked in the field of fibrous protein research. He was a pioneer in the field of low-angle X-ray investigations of a-keratins.

Henry Woods also classified textile patterns. The 46 two-color repeating patterns of the plane were originally classified by him in 1935–36.

Woods' scientific career began in 1928 at the University of Leeds, where he was appointed Research Assistant to William Astbury who had just joined the Textile Department and had founded the Textile Physics Laboratory. With Astbury, he published some classical papers on "X-ray studies of the structure of hair, wool, and related fibres".

Woods and Astbury recognized that the a-~ transformations involved an actual stretching of the molecular chains. Today, it is well known that helical structures are transformed into pleated sheet structures. In the 1930s, however, it was revolutionary to explain a macroscopic stretching process using molecular arguments and to postulate correlations between the X-ray structure and the physical properties of fibrous proteins.

Woods was always proud of introducing a new word — "supercontraction" — into the English language.