The Budapest-born research crystallographer Dr Olga Kennard, FRS, OBE, who has died in Cambridge aged 98, travelled across Europe to reach Dover on August 12, 1939. She was armed with a visa allowing her to remain for just two weeks. Yet she would one day build up a formidable data centre in her scientific field at Cambridge.

The eldest daughter of Joir and Katerina Weisz, a merchant banker and antique dealer, she had been educated up to the age of 14 in a Jewish gymnasium in Budapest, but with the toughening of life for Jews in Hungary her father decided to to flee to England in 1938 and she, with her mother and younger siblings Judith and George undertook the perilous journey across Europe to join him.

They left Hungary just two weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.

She attended grammar schools in Hove and Evesham and in 1942 went up to Newnham College, Cambridge to study natural sciences. She remained there as a research assistant at the Cavendish laboratory, and developed an interest in crystallography.

She married Dr David Kennard and moved to London, working at the Medical Research Council. They returned to Cambridge and Olga gained a reputation as a scientist, working full time even after the birth of her two daughters Susie and Julia.

She experimented in crystal structures in the chemistry department in Cambridge, building up a data bank which led to her founding the Cambridge crystallographic data centre. It was a vision well ahead of its time, facililOtating international research.

She received a doctorate in science from Cambridge, was awarded an OBE and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In Cambridge Dr Kennard was also involved in the Beth Shalom Reform community, notably in the building of their beautiful synagogue.

Following her divorce from David, she married Sir Arnold Burgen in 1993 and they enjoyed 28 years of happy married life. She became a trustee of the British Museum for eight years. Ten months after Arnold’s death, she died at home in the house she built in Cambridge.

She is survived by her daughters, Susie Kelpie and Julia Pyper, five grand children, Alice and Isabel Kelpie, Lottie Ramsey and Otto Pyper and two step sons, Stephen and Andy Burgen.

Dr Olga Kennard (Lady Olga Burgen ) born March 23, 1924. Died March 2, 2023