He was best known for the development of X-ray crystallography, a technique used to determine the molecular structures of tens of thousands of biological molecules.
His PhD was awarded in 1958 for X-ray analysis of haemoglobin supervised by Max Perutz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).
[10][11] Following graduation from Cambridge, Blow spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded by the Fulbright Foundation[5] In 1954, he met Max Perutz;[12] they began to study a new technique wherein X-rays would be passed through a protein sample at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
His doctoral students include Richard Henderson,[2][3] Paul Sigler,[1] and Alice Vrielink.
[5] Blow married Mavis Sears in 1955, and they had two children, a son Julian and a daughter Elizabeth.