Peter Privalov, father of the field of biological microcalorimetry, dies at 88 The longtime Hopkins research professor, who joined the university in 1991, laid the theoretical groundwork and developed the technology for measuring the heat released during protein folding within a cell By Rachel Wallach / Published Dec 23, 2020 Peter Privalov, research professor in the Department of Biology at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and a founding father of the field of biological microcalorimetry, died of lymphoma on Sunday, Dec. 20. He was 88. Throughout his career, Privalov focused on the physical principles of the architecture of biological macromolecules: proteins, nucleic acids, and their complexes. Specifically, he studied the energetics of formation of their three-dimensional structures, which are the forces stabilizing their structure, the mechanism of cooperation of these forces, and their interaction with the surrounding media of water or lipids.