Dr Richard Simpson is one of Australia's leading protein chemists. He has developed micropurification and analytical techniques which are used by scientists all over the world. He is recognized for his discoveries of new growth regulatory proteins and in particular for his innovative approaches to protein sequencing.
His world standing and pre-eminence are evidenced by a test exercise organized in 1994 by the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities. Of its 262 world members, 78 accepted the challenge of two 50 picomol samples of a test protein. Only 11 of them were able to identify correctly the first 25 residues, and only four identified the protein from their sequence data.
The highest repetitive yield and longest analysis (>40 residues) was achieved by Dr Simpson's team.