The History of RasMol

RasMol (RASter MOLecules) was born in 1989 as a final-year parallel programming project by Roger Sayle at Imperial College, London. At the time, biochemistry was shifting its emphasis from simple connectivity to complex surfaces and interactions, which required better depth perception through shadowing and real-time manipulation. Roger chose spheres as the primary graphical object and spent his project comparing algorithms to speed up ray-tracing on parallel computers.

While pursuing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Roger met Dr. Andrew Coulson, who became a mentor for RasMol. Over the next four years, the program evolved from a simple demonstration into a powerful tool capable of rendering wireframes, calculating hydrogen bonds, and displaying various molecular representations—often driven by specific requests from the research community.

In June 1993, Roger released RasMol into the public domain. Despite receiving offers of payment, he chose to keep it free, even returning checks from hospitals. A temporary position at Glaxo Research and Development eventually turned into a long-term arrangement that funded the development of the Apple Macintosh version and provided access to a chemistry-oriented user group.

Today, RasMol is one of the most widely used molecular graphics programs in the world, serving as an essential tool for education and research globally. Roger credits the success of RasMol to the user community, whose feedback and suggestions have shaped its continual evolution.