In his twenty years at Harvard, as at Oxford, the research group Knowles directed consisted of an equal male-female ratio, his wife Jane notes proudly.

As Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry--a post he holds to this day--Knowles swiftly earned the professional respect of both his students and scientists worldwide.

He also served as chair of the department from 1980 to 1983.

"He was certainly one of the world's most influential enzymologists at the time he retired," says Theodore Widlanski, a former graduate student of Knowles' who is now a tenured professor of chemistry at Indiana University.

Widlanski describes Knowles's lab as a congenial place, with a boss who insisted all the students call him "Jeremy." Many of those graduate students are now tenured professors themselves--a distinction which reflects on their dissertation adviser's ability as a mentor.

Associates say Knowles has an unusual gift for making the intricacies of the most complex scientific experiments clear even to non-specialists.

"One thing he was good at doing was taking very complex experiments and explaining them to people who had no background in his field," Widlanski says.

During the course of his career, Knowles received many honors and awards for his scientific accomplishments. In 1993, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II named him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, one of the country's top honors.

In addition, Knowles has won a slew of prizes for his academic work--including the Charmian Medal, the Bader Award, the Repligen Award, the Prelog Award and the Welch Award in Chemistry. He also won the Davy Medal for the Royal Society, of which he is a Fellow.

When he became Dean of FAS, Knowles gave up teaching and conducting research of his own, although he continued to supervise his graduate students' research. His research group disbanded about two years ago when the last student graduated.

Despite his administrative duties, Knowles continues to maintain a strong interest in chemistry. The Dean keeps the tables in the waiting room of his spacious University Hall office stacked with issues of Science and other scientific journals.

THE DEAN

In 1983, when the 48-year-old Knowles was still chair of the Chemistry Department, then-president Derek C. Bok invited him to become Dean of FAS to replace Henry Rosovsky. Knowles refused.

"We made a big effort to recruit Jeremy as Rosovsky's successor," Bok says. "He was the first person we asked."

Bok says he was impressed by Knowles' record of leadership in the chemistry department, which "does not take well to leadership and is a group dedicated to the highest intellectual standards."