1 Gene Center Munich, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Feodor-Lynen-Strasse 25, D-81377 Munich, Germany. cramer@lmb.uni-muenchen.de
This year's Nobel laureate in chemistry is Roger Kornberg. Patrick Cramer gives a personal account of how the Kornberg laboratory determined the structure of the RNA polymerase II core enzyme.