‘Remarkable’ British Jews honoured on new stamps

Two Jews are among ten “remarkable” Brits celebrated on new Royal Mail stamps launching this week.

From Tuesday customers at 10,000 Post Offices throughout the UK can buy stamps showing Max Perutz, a molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, or Abram Games, a graphic designer.

They feature alongside better-known names such as actors Alec Guiness and Kenneth More, football manager Joe Mercer and poet Dylan Thomas.

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The series, called ‘Remarkable Lives,’ commemorates individuals whose centenaries of birth fall in 2014 and draws from fields as diverse as economics and art, with broadcasters and spies among others.

“It celebrates ten remarkable individuals,” said a Royal Mail statement. “They have all made a major contribution to British society.”

Until now, Perutz (above, right) and Games (left) have been largely unknown outside their specialist fields. Perutz was born in Vienna but followed an inspirational chemistry professor to Cambridge shortly before his family’s business was expropriated by the Nazis. There, he set up a lab with colleagues and later won a Nobel Prize for his work on the structure of haemoglobin.

Games, whose work has been described as “a fascinating record of British social history, played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in the Second World War, designing over 100 posters for the war effort as Official War Poster Artist.

In a varied career that included designing stamps for Israel, book jackets for Penguin and emblems for festivals, he also invented coffee makers and “duplication machines”.