physics

John M. Squire

John M. Squire is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John M. Squire rather than just read about it. In short: John Michael Squire (27 June 1945 – 31 January 2021) was a British professor of structural biophysics in the University of London, a visiting professor at Imperial College London and a research fellow at the University of Bristol, where he researched muscle contraction and blood vessel glycocalyx structure. He was a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Society of Biology.

Key takeaways

John M. Squire belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John M. Squire to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John M. Squire from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Michael Squire (27 June 1945 – 31 January 2021) was a British professor of structural biophysics in the University of London, a visiting professor at Imperial College London and a research fellow at the University of Bristol, where he researched muscle contraction and blood vessel glycocalyx structure. He was a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Society of Biology. He was an emeritus member of the US Biophysical Society and an honorary member of the British Biophysical Society. He died from COVID-19 in January 2021, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

Education Squire attended Fettes College, Edinburgh, and obtained a B.Sc. (physics, 1966), AKC and PhD (biophysics, 1969) from King's College, University of London, UK, the latter under the supervision of Arthur Elliott.

Career Squire started his career as a senior lecturer at the Biophysics Institute, Aarhus University, Denmark in 1969 followed by a brief period in the Zoology Department at Oxford University. In 1972, he moved to Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London, UK, to head the Biopolymer Group. He remained at Imperial College until his official retirement in 2006, when he was head of the Biological Structure and Function Section of what was then the Biomedical Sciences Division at Imperial College. He was made Professor of Structural Biophysics in the University of London in 1995. His final position was as honorary research fellow in the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology at Bristol University, UK, and as a visiting professor at Imperial College London, UK.

Research The main focus of his research was on the structural basis of muscle contraction. His early contributions were the proposal of the steric blocking mechanism for the regulation of muscle contraction, the discovery of face (side) polarity in the myosin filaments of vertebrate smooth muscle, and the proposal of a general packing scheme of myosin molecules within the myosin filaments of all muscles. He was an expert on the X-ray diffraction analysis of static and contracting muscle, and recently had been involved in the structure analysis of isolated myosin and actin filaments by electron microscopy and single particle analysis. He founded and chaired both the Collaborative Computational Project Number 13 (CCP13) for the analysis of fibre X-ray diffraction data and the Imperial Muscle Initiative (IMI). With Professor David Parry (biophysicist) he initiated and organised the first five Workshops on Coiled-coils, Collagen and Co-proteins held every four years in Alpbach, Austria. In 2002 a special issue of the Journal of Structural Biology based on one of these Alpbach Workshops and co-edited by Squire won the Best Professional/ Scholarly Publishing Journal: Medicine Award. Squire published well over 100 original papers, together with many reviews and in 1981 a 700-page monograph on The Structural Basis of Muscular Contraction. He also wrote or edited several other books on muscle and on fibrous proteins. His final works were on the unresolved problem of how myosin and actin molecules interact to bring about muscle contraction, as well as the structure and function of the blood vessel glycocalyx.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John M. Squire

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John M. Squire claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John M. Squire before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John M. Squire ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John M. Squire

In research: John M. Squire appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John M. Squire in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John M. Squire is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1945 births, 2021 deaths, Academics of Imperial College London, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John M. Squire outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John M. Squire in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John M. Squire means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John M. Squire out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John M. Squire in simple terms?

Why does John M. Squire matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John M. Squire?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John M. Squire.