Alexander Wlodawer is a Senior Investigator at the Laboratory of Cell Biology, NCI, National Institutes of Health.
He sent the following comment:
In the history you stress the role of the journals and their rules regarding deposition of both coordinates and structure factors, but I did not see one other crucial development. That was the requirement by first HHMI, and then NIH to deposit such data as a condition of being funded. I don’t remember the exact dates, but I do remember talking to Tom Cech, then the director of HHMI, convincing him that such requirements should be put in place. He also promised to talk to Harold Varmus, then director of the NIH. Very soon after that conversation the rules were officially announced.