crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-13 19:05:45

1988) Joseph Murray

Gist

The human body has many different organs with different tasks. If an organ is unable to perform its task, a person cannot live normally without external help. Because the immune system rejects foreign bodies, transferring organs from one person to another was long thought impossible. However, in 1954 Joseph Murray avoided rejection using radiotherapy and immunosuppressants, successfully transplanting a kidney between identical twins. This paved the way for other organ transplants.

Summary

Joseph E. Murray (born April 1, 1919, Milford, Massachusetts, U.S.—died November 26, 2012, Boston, Massachusetts) was an American surgeon who in 1990 was co-winner (with E. Donnall Thomas) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work in lifesaving organ- and tissue-transplant techniques.

Murray received a bachelor of arts degree (1940) from Holy Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts, and a medical degree (1943) from Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He completed his surgical residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (later Brigham and Women’s Hospital), Boston, where he began his prizewinning research. From 1964 to 1986 he served as chief plastic surgeon at Brigham, and from 1972 to 1985 he was chief plastic surgeon at Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston. He also became professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School in 1970; he retired as professor emeritus in 1986.

While grafting skin on wounded soldiers during World War II, Murray observed that grafts were compatible only between identical twins. Thinking that such might be the case for transplanted internal organs as well, he experimented with kidney transplants in dogs. In 1954 he performed a kidney transplant for an individual whose genetically identical twin volunteered to donate a kidney; the recipient survived for several years. Murray continued to search for ways of suppressing a patient’s immune system to keep it from rejecting genetically foreign parts. With the use of immunosuppressive drugs, in 1962 he performed the first successful kidney transplant using a kidney from a donor unrelated to his patient. Eventually he was able to successfully transplant a kidney from a cadaver.

In 2001 Murray published an autobiography, Surgery of the Soul: Reflections on a Curious Career; the book was praised by physicians and others in the medical community for its insight into medical practice.

Details

Joseph Edward Murray (April 1, 1919 – November 26, 2012) was an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954.

Murray shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 with E. Donnall Thomas for "their discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease."

Biography

Murray was born on April 1, 1919, in Milford, Massachusetts, to William A. and Mary (née DePasquale) Murray. He was of Irish and Italian descent. A star athlete at the Milford High School, he excelled in football, ice hockey, and baseball. After being influenced by his family doctor, Murray resolved to become a surgeon.

Upon graduation, Murray attended the College of the Holy Cross with the intent to play baseball. However, his baseball practices and lab schedules conflicted, forcing him to give up the sport. He studied philosophy and English, earning a degree in the humanities at Holy Cross. Murray subsequently attended Harvard Medical School; after graduating with his medical degree, Murray began his internship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. During that time, he was inducted into the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army.

Murray served in the plastic surgery unit at Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania. At Valley Forge General Hospital he worked for Bradford Cannon, a prominent plastic surgeon, and developed a passion for plastic surgery. His unit cared for thousands of soldiers wounded on the battlefields of World War II, working to reconstruct their disfigured hands and faces. His interest in transplantation grew out of working with burn patients during his time in the Army. Murray and his colleagues observed that the burn victims rejected temporary skin grafts from unrelated donors much more slowly than had been expected, suggesting the potential for organ grafts, or transplants.

After his military service, Murray completed his general surgical residency, and joined the surgical staff of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He then went to New York to train in plastic surgery at New York and Memorial Hospitals, returning to the Brigham as a member of the surgical staff in 1951.

In 2001, Murray published his autobiography, Surgery Of The Soul: Reflections on a Curious Career.

Career

On December 23, 1954, Murray performed the world's first successful renal transplant between the identical Herrick twins at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (later Brigham and Women's Hospital), an operation that lasted five and a half hours. He was assisted by J. Hartwell Harrison and other noted physicians. In Operating Room 2 of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Murray transplanted a healthy kidney donated by Ronald Herrick into his twin brother Richard, who was dying of chronic nephritis. Richard lived for eight more years following the operation. In 1959, Murray went on to perform the world's first successful allograft and, in 1962, the world's first cadaveric renal transplant.

Throughout the following years, Murray became an international leader in the study of transplantation biology, the use of immunosuppressive agents, and studies on the mechanisms of rejection. In the 1960s, top scientists investigating immunosuppressive drugs sought to work with Murray. Together, they tailored the new drug Imuran (generic azathioprine) for use in transplants. The discovery of Imuran and other anti-rejection drugs, such as prednisone, allowed Murray to carry out transplants from unrelated donors. By 1965, the survival rates after receiving a kidney transplant from an unrelated donor exceeded 65%.

As a Harvard Medical School faculty member, Murray trained physicians from around the world in transplantation and reconstructive surgery, frequently performing surgeries in developing countries. In his 20 years as director of the Surgical Research Laboratory at Harvard and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, he inspired others who became leaders in transplantation and biology throughout the world. He served as chief plastic surgeon at the Peter Bent Brigham (which later became Brigham and Women's Hospital) until 1986. He also served as chief plastic surgeon at Children's Hospital Boston from 1972 to 1985, retiring as professor of Surgery Emeritus in 1986 from Harvard Medical School.

In 1990, he was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work in organ transplantation.

Murray was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and as a regent of the American College of Surgeons. He received the American Surgical Association's Medal for Distinguished Service to Surgery, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Francis Amory Prize, the American Association of Plastic Surgeons' Honorary Award and Clinician of the Year Award, and the National Kidney Foundation's Gift of Life Award. He was named one of the 350 most outstanding citizens representing the medical profession for the City of Boston's 350th anniversary. In 1991, Murray received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 1996, he was appointed Academician of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican. Murray was selected to receive the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame in recognition of outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society in March 2005.

Personal life and death

Murray's father was a noted lawyer and a district court judge. Murray married his college life sweetheart Bobby Link, a school teacher, in June 1945, with whom he would have 6 children: 3 boys and 3 girls.

Murray died on November 26, 2012, aged 93. He suffered a stroke at his suburban Boston home on Thanksgiving and died at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the very hospital where he had performed the first organ transplant operation.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-14 16:41:48

1989) E. Donnall Thomas

Gist

Edward Donnall Thomas, MD, known as "Don" to his friends, was born in a small town in central Texas in 1920. His most notable achievement, the Nobel Prize in Medicine, was awarded in 1990 for his development of bone marrow transplantation, which could cure patients with advanced leukemia. Dr. Thomas served as ASH president in 1988. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Washington and director emeritus of the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Thomas died on Saturday, October 20, 2012, in Seattle, Washington. He was 92.

Summary

E. Donnall Thomas (born March 15, 1920, Mart, Texas, U.S.—died October 20, 2012, Seattle, Washington) was an American physician who in 1990 was corecipient (with Joseph E. Murray) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work in transplanting bone marrow-derived hematopoietic cells (which form blood cells) from one person to another—an achievement related to the treatment of patients with leukemia and other blood cancers or blood diseases.

Thomas studied at the University of Texas (B.A., 1941; M.A., 1943) and the Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1946). He served at a few hospitals and a research centre before becoming a professor of medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (1955–63) and the University of Washington School of Medicine (from 1963) in Seattle. He became professor emeritus at the University of Washington in 1990. In 1975 Thomas and his research team transferred to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where he established and led the world’s first bone marrow transplant centre for the treatment of leukemia, aplastic anemia, and other blood disorders.

In 1956 Thomas performed the first successful bone marrow transplant between two humans: a leukemic patient and his identical twin. The recipient’s body accepted the donated marrow and used it to make new, healthy blood cells and immune system cells. Thomas adopted methods to match the tissues of donor and recipient closely enough to minimize the latter’s rejection of the former’s marrow (graft-versus-host disease), and he also developed techniques to reduce the chances of transplant rejection. In 1968 these refinements enabled him to perform the first successful bone marrow transplant in a leukemia patient using bone marrow from a relative who was not an identical twin. Before his work, acute lymphocytic leukemia had a very high mortality rate. By 1990, partially as a result of his research, approximately 85 percent of all lymphocytic leukemia patients with good human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matches could be expected to survive.

In 1990 Thomas was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science. He also wrote several books during his career, including Aplastic Anemia (1978), Frontiers on Bone Marrow Transplantation: Fetal Hematopoiesis (1991), and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation (1999; cowritten with Stephen J. Forman and Karl G. Blume).

Details

Edward Donnall Thomas (March 15, 1920 – October 20, 2012) was an American physician, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, and director emeritus of the clinical research division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In 1990 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Joseph E. Murray for the development of cell and organ transplantation. Thomas and his wife and research partner Dottie Thomas developed bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for leukemia.

Thomas was a lead investigator in a failed series of experimental treatments for leukemia and for Graft-versus-host disease at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from 1981 to 1993. Participants were not informed that Thomas and other researchers had a potential financial conflict of interest in the trials, and were never properly informed of the risks. The study continued despite objections from members of the Center’s Internal Review Board. 84 of the 85 participants in the study died.

Biography

Born in Mart, Texas, Thomas often shadowed his father who was a general practice doctor. Later, he attended the University of Texas at Austin where he studied chemistry and chemical engineering, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1941 and a Master's degree in 1943. While Thomas was an undergraduate he met his wife, Dorothy (Dottie) Martin while she was training to be journalist. They had three children. Thomas entered Harvard Medical School in 1943, receiving a Doctor of Medicine in 1946. Dottie became a lab technician during this time to support the family, and the pair worked closely thereafter. He did his residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital before serving two years in the United States Army as an internist stationed in Germany. "In 1955, he was appointed physician in chief at the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, now Bassett Medical Center, in Cooperstown, New York, an affiliate of Columbia University."

At Mary Imogene Bassett, he began to study rodents that received lethal doses of radiation who were then saved by an infusion of marrow cells. At the time, patients who underwent bone marrow transplantation all died from infections or immune reactions that weren't seen in the rodent studies. Thomas began to use dogs as a model system. In 1963, he moved his lab to the United States Public Health Service in Seattle.

Thomas also received National Medal of Science in 1990. In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.

He died of heart failure.

Additional Information

Life

Donnall Thomas was born in Texas. He was the son of a country general practitioner and was brought up in a small village and educated at the local school. He studied at the University of Texas in Austin, gaining degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering in 1943. He qualified in medicine in 1946 from Harvard. While a student he married Dorothy Martin. From 1963 they lived in Seattle. He retired from patient care in 1990, but he continued to work in the Seattle transplant unit, and to travel and lecture all over the world. They had three children. He died in 2012.

Work

The formation of blood cells takes place in bone marrow, and malfunctioning of bone marrow cells can lead to illnesses such as leukemia. From the mid-1950s Donnall Thomas developed methods of providing new bone marrow cells for people through transplants. Using radiation and chemotherapy, the body’s own bone marrow cells are killed and the immune system’s rejection mechanism is subdued. Bone marrow cells from a donor are then provided through a blood transfusion.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-15 18:00:08

1990) Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Gist

An accumulation of matter with uniform physical and chemical properties is said to be in a certain phase, such as solid, liquid or gas. Magnetism and the orientation of molecules can also give rise to different phases. Different phases are characterized by different forms of order and disorder. During the 1970s Pierre Gilles de Gennes showed how transitions from order to disorder come about, especially for liquid crystals and polymers in solution. He demonstrated that the results apply to a number of different types of phase transitions.

Summary

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (born October 24, 1932, Paris, France—died May 18, 2007, Orsay) was a French physicist, who was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discoveries about the ordering of molecules in liquid crystals and polymers.

The son of a physician, Gennes studied at the École Normale Supérieure. He was employed as an engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission (1955–61) and then was a professor with the Orsay Liquid Crystals Group of the University of Paris (1961–71). He later taught at the Collège de France (1971–76) and served as director of the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (1976–2002).

Gennes investigated how extremely complex forms of matter behave during the transition from order to disorder. He showed how electrically or mechanically induced phase changes transform liquid crystals from a transparent to an opaque state, the phenomenon exploited in liquid-crystal displays. His research on polymers contributed to understanding how the long molecular chains in molten polymers move, making it possible for scientists to better determine and control polymer properties.

A few of the judges on the Nobel committee described Gennes as “the Isaac Newton of our time” in having successfully applied mathematics to generalized explanations of several different physical phenomena.

Details

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (24 October 1932 – 18 May 2007) was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.

Education and early life

He was born in Paris, France, and was home-schooled to the age of 12. By the age of 13, he had adopted adult reading habits and was visiting museums. Later, de Gennes studied at the École Normale Supérieure. After leaving the École in 1955, he became a research engineer at the Saclay center of the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, working mainly on neutron scattering and magnetism, with advice from Anatole Abragam and Jacques Friedel. He defended his Ph.D. in 1957 at the University of Paris.

Career and research

In 1959, he was a postdoctoral research visitor with Charles Kittel at the University of California, Berkeley, and then spent 27 months in the French Navy. In 1961, he was assistant professor in Orsay and soon started the Orsay group on superconductors. In 1968, he switched to studying liquid crystals.

In 1971, he became professor at the Collège de France, and participated in STRASACOL (a joint action of Strasbourg, Saclay and Collège de France) on polymer physics. From 1980 on, he became interested in interfacial problems: the dynamics of wetting and adhesion.

He worked on granular materials and on the nature of memory objects in the brain.

Awards and honours

He was awarded the Harvey Prize, Lorentz Medal and Wolf Prize in 1988 and 1990. In 1991, he received the Nobel Prize in physics. He was then director of the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI), a post he held from 1976 until his retirement in 2002.

P.G. de Gennes has also received the F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society in 1997, the Holweck Prize from the joint French and British Physical Society; the Ampere Prize, French Academy of Science; the gold medal from the French CNRS; the Matteuci Medal, Italian Academy; the Harvey Prize, Israel; and polymer awards from both APS and ACS.

He was awarded the above-mentioned Nobel Prize for discovering that "methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers".

The Royal Society of Chemistry awards the De Gennes Prize biennially, in his honour.[10] He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1984. He was awarded A. Cemal Eringen Medal in 1998.

Personal life

He married Anne-Marie Rouet (born in 1933) in June 1954. They remained married until his death and had three children together: Christian (born 9 December 1954), Dominique (born 6 May 1956) and Marie-Christine (born 11 January 1958).

He also has four children with physicist Françoise Brochard-Wyart (born in 1944) who was one of his former doctoral students and then colleague and co-author. The children are: Claire Wyart (born 16 February 1977), Matthieu Wyart (born 24 May 1978), Olivier Wyart (born 3 August 1984) and Marc de Gennes (born 16 January 1991).

Professors John Goodby and George Gray noted in an obituary: "Pierre was a man of great charm and humour, capable of making others believe they, too, were wise. We will remember him as an inspirational lecturer and teacher, an authority on Shakespeare, an expert skier who attended conference lectures appropriately attired with skis to hand, and, robed in red, at the Bordeaux liquid crystal conference in 1978, took great delight in being inaugurated as a Vignoble de St Émilion."

In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.

On 22 May 2007, his death was made public as official messages and tributes poured in.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-16 16:42:01

1991) Richard R. Ernst

Gist:

Work

Protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus behave like small spinning magnets. Accordingly, atoms and molecules assume a certain orientation in a magnetic field. This can be dislodged, however, by radio waves of certain frequencies that are characteristic for different atoms. Known as resonance frequencies, these are also affected by the atoms’ chemical surroundings. As a result, the phenomenon can be utilized to determine the composition and structure of various molecules. To accomplish this, Richard Ernst developed highly sensitive and high resolution methods in the 1960s and 1970s.

Summary

Richard R. Ernst (born August 14, 1933, Winterthur, Switzerland—died June 4, 2021, Winterthur) was a Swiss chemist and teacher who in 1991 won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of techniques for high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Ernst’s refinements made NMR techniques a basic and indispensable tool in chemistry and also extended their usefulness to other sciences.

Ernst received both a B.A. in chemistry (1957) and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry (1962) from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. From 1963 to 1968 he worked as a research chemist in Palo Alto, California. In 1966, working with an American colleague, Ernst discovered that the sensitivity of NMR techniques (hitherto limited to analysis of only a few nuclei) could be dramatically increased by replacing the slow, sweeping radio waves traditionally used in NMR spectroscopy with short, intense pulses. His discovery enabled analysis of a great many more types of nuclei and smaller amounts of materials. In 1968 Ernst returned to Switzerland to teach at his alma mater; he was made assistant professor in 1970 and full professor in 1976 before retiring in 1998.

His second major contribution to the field of NMR spectroscopy was a technique that enabled a high-resolution “two-dimensional” study of larger molecules than had previously been accessible to NMR. With Ernst’s refinements, scientists were able to determine the three-dimensional structure of organic and inorganic compounds and of biological macromolecules such as proteins; to study the interaction between biological molecules and other substances such as metal ions, water, and drugs; to identify chemical species; and to study the rates of chemical reactions.

Ernst also was credited with many inventions and held several patents in his field. Science + Dharma = Social Responsibility (2009) is a documentary about his life and work.

Details

Richard Robert Ernst (14 August 1933 – 4 June 2021) was a Swiss physical chemist and Nobel laureate.

Ernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his contributions towards the development of Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy while at Varian Associates and ETH Zurich. These underpin applications to both to chemistry with NMR spectroscopy and to medicine with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

He humbly referred to himself as a "tool-maker" rather than a scientist.

Early life

Ernst was born in Winterthur, Switzerland on 14 August 1933 to Robert Ernst and Irma Ernst-Brunner. He was the oldest of three children of Irma Brunner and Robert Ernst. He grew up in a house built in 1898 by his grandfather, who was a merchant. During his childhood, he was interested in music, playing the violoncello and even considering a career as a musical composer. At 13-years old, Ernst stumbled upon a box of chemicals belonging to his late uncle, a metallurgical engineer. Young Ernst was excited by what he found, and set about trying all conceivable reactions, some of which resulted in explosions that terrified his parents.

Education

He enrolled in the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich to study chemistry and received his diploma in 1957 as a “Diplomierter Ingenieur Chemiker''. He was disappointed in the course content, so conducted further research and taught himself quantum mechanics and thermodynamics in his spare time. After a break to complete his military service, Ernst earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1962 from ETH Zurich. His dissertation was on nuclear magnetic resonance in the field of physical chemistry.

Career

Ernst entered Varian Associates as a scientist in 1963 and invented Fourier transform NMR, noise decoupling, and a number of other methods. He returned to ETH Zurich in 1968 and became a lecturer. His career developed to assistant professor in 1970 and associate professor in 1972. Since 1976, Richard R. Ernst was Full Professor of Physical Chemistry.

Ernst led a research group dedicated to magnetic resonance spectroscopy, was the director of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory at the ETH Zurich. He developed two-dimensional NMR and several novel pulse techniques. He retired in 1998. He participated in the development of medical magnetic resonance tomography, as well as the NMR structure determination of biopolymers in solution collaborating with Professor Kurt Wüthrich. He also participated in the study of intra-molecular dynamics.

Awards and honours

Ernst was a foreign fellow of the Estonian Academy of Sciences (elected 2002), the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Sciences, London, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1993. He was awarded the John Gamble Kirkwood Medal in 1989.

In 1991, Ernst was on an aeroplane flying over the Atlantic when he discovered he had been awarded The Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was invited into the math, where he was given a radio to talk to the Nobel committee. Here they told him he was being honoured "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy".

Ernst was member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board. He was awarded the Marcel Benoist Prize in 1986, the Wolf Prize for Chemistry in 1991, and Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in 1991. He was also awarded the Tadeus Reichstein Medal in 2000[26] and the Order of the Star of Romania in 2004. He also held Honorary Doctorates from the Technical University of Munich, EPF Lausanne, University of Zurich, University Antwerpen, Babes-Bolyai University, and University Montpellier.

The 2009 Bel Air Film Festival featured the world premiere of a documentary film on Ernst Science Plus Dharma Equals Social Responsibility. Produced by Carlo Burton, the film takes place in Ernst's hometown in Switzerland. In 2022, another movie about Richard R. Ernst premiered at the Cameo cinema in Winterthur, produced by Lukas Schwarzenbacher and Susanne Schmid. The documentary contains a retrospective of Richard R. Ernsts life, which is filmed only a few months before his death.

Personal life

Ernst was married to Magdalena until his death. Together, they had three children: Anna Magdalena, Katharina Elisabeth and Hans-Martin Walter. Besides toiling with his work, Ernst also enjoyed music and art, specifically Tibetan scroll art. Using scientific techniques, Ernst would research the pigments on the scrolls to learn about their geographic origin and age.

Ernst died on 4 June 2021 in Winterthur at the age of 87.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-17 16:33:11

1992) Erwin Neher

Gist:

Work

One of the fundamental processes of life is the transit of charged atoms—ions—through the surface layer of cells that make up organisms. Among other things, this transit is of crucial importance for the transfer of signals in nerves and muscles so that the body functions. Around 1980 Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann developed a method for measuring the extremely weak currents involved in ion transits. These results confirmed that the transit occurs through ion channels—molecules on the surface of cells that under certain conditions allow ions to pass through.

Summary

Erwin Neher (born March 20, 1944, Landsberg, Germany) is a German physicist who was a corecipient, with Bert Sakmann, of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their research into basic cell function and for the development of the patch-clamp technique, a laboratory method that can detect the very small electrical currents produced by the passage of ions through the cell membrane.

Neher earned a degree in physics from the Technical University of Munich and then attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he obtained a master of science degree in 1967. From 1968 to 1972 Neher did graduate work and postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich. He first developed the idea of the patch-clamp technique in his doctoral thesis and earned a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich in 1970.

In 1972 Neher went to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and two years later began his collaboration with Sakmann. This collaboration continued despite Neher’s move to the University of Washington in Seattle and, later, to Yale University. Neher and Sakmann presented their patch-clamp findings at a scientific gathering in 1976.

The membrane of a cell contains numerous porelike channels that control the passage of ions, or charged atoms, into and out of the cell. Neher and Sakmann used a thin glass pipette, one-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, that was fitted with an electrode to detect the flow of individual ions through the ion channels of a cell membrane. The technique was used to study a broad range of cell functions.

In 1976 Neher returned to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, and from 1983 to 2011 he was director of its membrane biophysics department. He and Sakmann published Single-Channel Recording (1983), a detailed reference with information on a variety of techniques that are applicable to the study of membrane channels.

Details

Erwin Neher (born 20 March 1944) is a German biophysicist, specializing in the field of cell physiology. For significant contribution in the field, in 1991 he was awarded, along with Bert Sakmann, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells".

Early life and education

Neher was born in Landsberg am Lech, Upper Bavaria, the son of Elisabeth (née Pfeiffer), a teacher, and Franz Xaver Neher, an executive at a dairy company. He studied physics at the Technical University of Munich from 1963 to 1966.

In 1966, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the US. He spent a year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and earned a master's degree in biophysics. While at the Charles Stevens Laboratory at Yale University for post-doctoral work he met fellow scientist Eva-Maria Neher, whom he married in 1978 and subsequently the couple had five children – Richard, Benjamin, Carola, Sigmund, and Margret.

In 2003 Neher was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.

Career

In 1986, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Bert Sakmann. In 1987, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. Along with Bert Sakmann, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991 for "their discoveries concerning the function of single ion channels in cells". Neher and Sakmann were the first to record the currents of single ion channels on a live cell (they were first recorded using the lipid bilayer method) through their development of the patch-clamp technique, a project Neher began as a postdoctoral research associate in the laboratory of Charles F. Stevens at Yale.

Since 1983, he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and led the Department for Membrane Biophysics. He turned into an emeritus director of the Institute since 2011. He is also a Professor Emeritus at the University of Göttingen and a co-chair of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-18 16:15:31

1993) Bert Sakmann

Gist:

Work

One of the fundamental processes of life is the transit of charged atoms—ions—through the surface layer of cells that make up organisms. Among other things, this transit is of crucial importance for the transfer of signals in nerves and muscles so that the body functions. Around 1980 Bert Sakmann and Erwin Neher developed a method for measuring the extremely weak currents involved in ion transits. These results confirmed that the transit occurs through ion channels—molecules on the surface of cells that under certain conditions allow ions to pass through.

Summary

Bert Sakmann (born June 12, 1942, Stuttgart, Germany) is a German medical doctor and research scientist who was a corecipient, with German physicist Erwin Neher, of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research into basic cell function and for their development of the patch-clamp technique—a laboratory method widely used in cell biology and neuroscience to detect electrical currents as small as a trillionth of an ampere through cell membranes.

From 1969 to 1970 Sakmann served as a research assistant in the department of neurophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry and then finished his postdoctoral studies in the department of biophysics at University College, London. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Göttingen in 1974, Sakmann joined the department of neurobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, where he shared laboratory space with Neher.

Working together, the two men used the patch-clamp technique to conclusively establish the existence of characteristic sets of ion channels in cell membranes—some of which permit the flow of only positive ions, while others pass only negatively charged ions. This established, they examined a broad range of cellular functions, eventually discovering the role that ion channels play in such diseases as diabetes, cystic fibrosis, epilepsy, several cardiovascular diseases, and certain neuromuscular disorders. These discoveries enabled the development of new and more specific drug therapies.

In 1979 Sakmann became a research associate in the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry’s membrane biology group. He later served as head of both the membrane biology unit (1983) and the institute’s department of cell physiology (1985). From 1989 to 2008 Sakmann headed the cell physiology department at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. Sakmann and Neher cowrote Single-Channel Recording (1983; 2nd ed., 2005), a reference work covering a variety of techniques used to study membrane channels.
Details

Bert Sakmann (born 12 June 1942) is a German cell physiologist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Erwin Neher in 1991 for their work on "the function of single ion channels in cells," and the invention of the patch clamp. Bert Sakmann was Professor at Heidelberg University and is an Emeritus Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany. Since 2008 he leads an emeritus research group at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology.

Life and career

Sakmann was born in Stuttgart, the son of Annemarie (née Schaefer), a physical therapist, and Bertold Sakmann, a theater director. Sakmann enrolled in Volksschule in Lindau, and completed the Wagenburg gymnasium in Stuttgart in 1961. He studied medicine from 1967 onwards in Tübingen, Freiburg, Berlin, Paris and Munich. After completing his medical exams at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, he became a medical assistant in 1968 at Munich University, while also working as a scientific assistant (Wissenschaftlicher Assistent) at Munich's Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie, in the Neurophysiology Department under Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt. In 1971 he moved to University College London, where he worked in the Department of Biophysics under Bernard Katz. In 1974, he completed his medical dissertation, under the title Elektrophysiologie der neuralen Helladaptation in der Katzenretina (Electrophysiology of Neural Light Adaption in the Cat Retina) in the Medical Faculty of Göttingen University.

Afterwards (still in 1974), Sakmann returned to the lab of Otto Creutzfeldt, who had meanwhile moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. Sakmann joined the membrane biology group in 1979.

In 1990 he accepted a position at the Faculty of Natural Science Medicine at Heidelberg University. One year later, he became a full university professor at the Faculty of Biology in Heidelberg.

On 2 June 2009, Peter Gruss, the president of the Max Planck Society, announced that Sakmann would serve as the scientific director of the Max Planck Florida Institute, the organization's biomedical research facility at Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter, Florida.

Sakmann is the founder of the Bert-Sakmann-Stiftung.

Awards and honors

In 1986, Sakmann and Erwin Neher were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1987, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. In 1991, he received the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience, the Harvey Prize and the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine along with Neher, with whom he had worked in Göttingen. In 1993 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1994.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-19 16:59:05

1994) Georges Charpak

Gist

When onrushing particles collide and form showers of new particles, they offer a key to understanding the smallest components of matter. In 1968 Georges Charpak developed the multiwire proportional chamber, which represented a more effective way of detecting particles. The multiwire chamber contains many parallel metal wires surrounded by a gas. Between the chamber’s walls and the threads, an electrical charge is introduced. When particles enter, electrons in the gas are liberated in cascading fashion. Currents are generated in the wires and are registered and processed using computers.

Summary

Georges Charpak (born August 1, 1924, Poland—died September 29, 2010, Paris, France) was a Polish-born French physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992 for his invention of subatomic particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber.

Charpak’s family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old. During World War II Charpak served in the resistance and was imprisoned by Vichy authorities in 1943. In 1944 he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where he remained until the camp was liberated in 1945. Charpak became a French citizen in 1946. He received his doctorate in 1955 from the Collège de France, Paris, where he worked in the laboratory of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. In 1959 he joined the staff of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva and in 1984 also became Joliot-Curie professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Physics and Chemistry, Paris. He was made a member of the French Academy of Science in 1985.

Charpak built the first multiwire proportional chamber in 1968. Unlike earlier detectors, such as the bubble chamber, which can record the tracks left by particles at the rate of only one or two per second, the multiwire chamber records up to one million tracks per second and sends the data directly to a computer for analysis. The speed and precision of the multiwire chamber and its descendants, the drift chamber and the time projection chamber, revolutionized high-energy physics. Samuel C.C. Ting’s discovery of the J/psi particle and Carlo Rubbia’s discovery of the W and Z particles, which won Nobel Prizes in 1976 and 1984, respectively, involved the use of multiwire chambers; and by the 1990s such detectors were at the heart of almost every experiment in particle physics. Charpak’s chamber also has applications in medicine, biology, and industry.

Details

Georges Charpak (born Jerzy Charpak), (1 August 1924 – 29 September 2010) was a Polish-born French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.

Life

Georges Charpak was born on 1 August 1924 as Jerzy Charpak to Jewish parents, Anna (Szapiro) and Maurice Charpak, in the village of Dąbrowica in Poland (now Dubrovytsia in Ukraine). Charpak's family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old, beginning his study of mathematics in 1941 at the Lycée Saint Louis. The actor and film director André Charpak was his younger brother.

During World War II Charpak served in the resistance and was imprisoned by Vichy authorities in 1943. In 1944 he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where he remained until the camp was liberated in 1945.

After classes préparatoires studies at Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris and later at Lycée Joffre in Montpellier, he joined in 1945 the Paris-based École des Mines, one of the most prestigious engineering schools in France. The following year he became a naturalized French citizen. He graduated in 1948, earning the French degree of Civil Engineer of Mines (Ingénieur Civil des Mines equivalent to a Master's degree) becoming a pupil in the laboratory of Frédéric Joliot-Curie at the Collège de France during 1949, the year after Curie had directed construction of the first atomic pile within France. While at the Collège, Charpak secured a research position for the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He received his PhD in 1954 in nuclear physics at the Collège de France, receiving the qualification after having written a thesis on the subject of very-low-energy radiation due to disintegration of nuclei (Charpak & Suzor).

In 1959, he joined the staff of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, where he invented and developed the multiwire proportional chamber. The chamber was patented and that quickly superseded the old bubble chambers, allowing for better data processing. This new creation had been made public during 1968. Charpak was later to become a joint inventor with Nlolc and Policarpo of the scintillation drift chamber during the latter parts of the 1970s. He eventually retired from CERN in 1991. In 1980, Georges Charpak became professor-in-residence at École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles in Paris (ESPCI) and held the Joliot-Curie Chair there in 1984. This is where he developed and demonstrated the powerful applications of the particle detectors he invented, most notably for enabling better health diagnostics. He was the co-founder of a number of start-up in the biolab arena, including Molecular Engines Laboratories, Biospace Instruments and SuperSonic Imagine – together with Mathias Fink. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences on 20 May 1985.

Georges Charpak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992 "for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber", with affiliations to both École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles (ESPCI) and CERN. This was the last time a single person was awarded the Physics prize, as of 2023. In 1999, Charpak received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In France, Charpak was a very strong advocate for nuclear power. Charpak was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Charpak married Dominique Vidal in 1953. They had three children. The pediatrician Nathalie Charpak (born 1955) is his daughter.

Charpak died on 29 September 2010, in Paris, at the age of 86.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-20 16:42:38

1995) Rudolph A. Marcus

Gist

The transfer of an electron from one atom or molecule to another is a fundamental chemical reaction that underlies variable chemical processes such as corrosion and photosynthesis. From 1956 to 1965 Rudolph Marcus developed a theory for electron transfer among molecules in a solution. The theory takes into consideration changes in the structure of the reacting molecules and the solvent’s molecules. Based on changes in the energy of the molecular system, the speed of chemical reactions can be calculated.

Summary

Rudolph A. Marcus (born July 21, 1923, Montreal, Que., Can.) is a Canadian-born American chemist, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on the theory of electron-transfer reactions in chemical systems. The Marcus theory shed light on diverse and fundamental phenomena such as photosynthesis, cell metabolism, and simple corrosion.

Marcus received his doctorate from McGill University, Montreal, in 1946. From 1951 he worked at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1964 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois, leaving in 1978 for the California Institute of Technology.

Marcus began studying electron-transfer reactions in the 1950s. In a series of papers published between 1956 and 1965, he investigated the role of surrounding solvent molecules in determining the rate of redox reactions—oxidation and reduction reactions in which the reactants exchange electrons—in solution. Marcus determined that subtle changes occur in the molecular structure of the reactants and the solvent molecules around them; these changes influence the ability of electrons to move between the molecules. He further established that the relationship between the driving force of an electron-transfer reaction and the reaction’s rate is described by a parabola. Thus, as more driving force is applied to a reaction, its rate at first increases but then begins to decrease. This insight aroused considerable skepticism until it was confirmed experimentally in the 1980s.

Marcus also did important work in areas such as transition-state theory, the theory of unimolecular reactions, and the theory of collisions and bound states.

Details

Rudolph Arthur Marcus (born July 21, 1923) is a Canadian-born American chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems". Marcus theory, named after him, provides a thermodynamic and kinetic framework for describing one electron outer-sphere electron transfer. He is a professor at Caltech, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.

Education and early life

Marcus was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of Esther (born Cohen) and Myer Marcus. His father was born in New York and his mother was born in England. His family background is from Ukmergė. He is Jewish and grew up mostly in a Jewish neighborhood in Montreal but also spent some of his childhood in Detroit, United States. His interest in the sciences began at a young age. He excelled at mathematics at Baron Byng High School. He then studied at McGill University under Carl A. Winkler, who had studied under Cyril Hinshelwood at the University of Oxford. At McGill, Marcus took more math courses than an average chemistry student, which would later aid him in creating his theory on electron transfer.

Marcus earned a B.Sc. in 1943 and a Ph.D. in 1946, both from McGill University. In 1958, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Career and research

After graduating, in 1946, he first worked at the National Research Council (Canada) followed by University of North Carolina, and Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1952, at the University of North Carolina, he developed Rice–Ramsperger–Kassel–Marcus theory by combining RRK theory with transition state theory. In 1964, he taught at the University of Illinois. His approach to solving a problem is to "go full tilt." Marcus moved to the California Institute of Technology in 1978.

Marcus theory of electron transfer

Electron transfer is one of the simplest forms of a chemical reaction. It consists of one outer-sphere electron transfer between substances of the same atomic structure likewise to Marcus’s studies between bivalent and trivalent iron ions. Electron transfer may be one of the most basic forms of chemical reaction but without it life cannot exist. Electron transfer is used in all respiratory functions as well as photosynthesis. In the process of oxidizing food molecules, two hydrogen ions, two electrons, and an oxygen molecule react to make an exothermic reaction as well as H2O (water). Due to fact that electron transfer is such a broad, common, and essential reaction within nature, Marcus's theory has become vital within the field of chemistry.

2H+ + 2e− + 1/2 O2 → H2O + heat

A type of chemical reaction linked to his many studies of electron transfer would be the transfer of an electron between metal ions in different states of oxidation. An example of this type of chemical reaction would be one between a bivalent and a trivalent iron ion in an aqueous solution. In Marcus's time chemists were astonished at the slow rate in which this specific reaction took place. This attracted many chemists in the 1950s and is also what began Marcus's interests in electron transfer. Marcus made many studies based on the principles that were found within this chemical reaction, and through his studies was able to create his famous Marcus theory. This theory gave way to new experimental programs that contributed to all branches within chemistry.

As of his 100th birthday, he is still active doing research.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-21 17:07:09

1996) Edmond H. Fischer

Gist

The element phosphorus and phosphate groups, consisting of phosphorous and oxygen atoms, play an important role in several vital biochemical processes. In the mid-1950s Edmond Fischer and Edwin Krebs were able to describe how processes in which proteins emit and absorb phosphate groups can take place in both directions. They demonstrated how the process is governed by special enzymes—proteins that speed up the transformation of other proteins without being incorporated in the final products of the process. These processes are important in the regulation of metabolism in the body and other functions.

Summary

Edmond H. Fischer (born April 6, 1920, Shanghai, China—died August 27, 2021, Seattle, Washington, U.S.) was an American biochemist who was the corecipient with Edwin G. Krebs of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning reversible phosphorylation, a biochemical mechanism that governs the activities of cell proteins.

Fischer, who was the son of Swiss parents, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Geneva in 1947 and conducted research there until 1953. That year he went to the United States, where he joined Krebs on the faculty of the University of Washington, Seattle. Fischer became a full professor in 1961 and professor emeritus in 1990.

Fischer and Krebs made their discoveries in the mid-1950s while studying reversible phosphorylation—i.e., the attachment or detachment of phosphate groups to cell proteins. The two men were the first to purify and characterize one of the enzymes (phosphorylase) involved in the process of phosphorylation. They also discovered the enzymes that catalyze the attachment and detachment of phosphate groups, known as protein kinases and phosphatase, respectively. In the decades following these initial discoveries, scientists were able to identify many other enzymes that regulate specific processes in cells, leading to explanations of the mechanisms controlling basic activities in all living cells.
Details

Edmond Henri Fischer (April 6, 1920 – August 27, 2021) was a Swiss-American biochemist. He and his collaborator Edwin G. Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes. From 2007 until 2014, he was the Honorary President of the World Cultural Council. At the time of his death at age 101 in 2021, he was the oldest living Nobel Prize laureate.

Early life

Fischer was born on April 6, 1920, in the Shanghai International Settlement, China. His mother, Renée Tapernoux, was born in France, and his father, Oscar Fischer, was born in Austria. His father, who was Jewish, practiced as a lawyer in Shanghai before the various consular courts in the city. Fischer's maternal grandfather founded the Courrier de Chine in Shanghai, the first newspaper published in French in China; he also helped to establish L'Ecole Municipale Française in Shanghai, where Fischer attended primary school.

At age seven, Fischer and his two elder brothers, Raoul and George, were sent to the Swiss boarding school La Châtaigneraie, near his mother's hometown in Vevey. He picked up mountain climbing and skiing during his time at the school. At high school he made a pact with a childhood friend, one of them would become a doctor and the other a scientist and then they could cure the ills of the world. While at high school Fischer was admitted to the Geneva Conservatory of Music as a pianist and he also considered becoming a professional musician.

At the completion of high school, Fischer wanted to study microbiology inspired by the works of French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur and partly driven by his father's death from tuberculosis; however, he was advised to study chemistry. He studied at the University of Geneva during World War II, he enjoyed organic chemistry and also studied biology. He completed a PhD in organic chemistry under the supervision of Kurt Heinrich Meyer, who worked on the structure of polysaccharides, and the enzymes needed for their synthesis and breakdown. Fischer worked on α-amylase.

Career and research

After his PhD, Fischer went to the United States in 1950 for postdoctoral research. He was supposed to take up a position at Caltech, but he was also, unexpectedly, offered a position at the University of Washington in Seattle. Seattle reminded Fischer and his wife of Switzerland so they chose to settle there.

Protein phosphorylation/hydrolysis cycle

Six months after his arrival in Seattle, Fischer learnt of fellow biochemist from the same university, Edwin G. Krebs, who was also trying to answer a similar question on where muscles received the energy that they needed to contract. Fischer began collaborating with Krebs, and the duo began their investigations on glycogen phosphorylase, an enzyme that had been discovered by the husband and wife pair of Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori who had won the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1947. Krebs had earlier studied the enzyme in the muscle tissue, while Fischer had studied the enzyme in a potato. The duo realized a discrepancy in that the enzyme in the muscle required an additional chemical to function, while the potato did not require that additional chemical. Krebs and Fischer defined a series of reactions leading to the activation/inactivation of this enzyme as triggered by hormones and calcium, and in the process discovering the cycle of protein phosphorylation and hydrolysis.

Explained simply, the cycle works like this: a protein kinase moves a phosphate group from adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to a protein, converting it to adenosine diphosphate (ADP). The shape and the function of this protein is thus altered enabling it to take part in converting glycogen into glucose which is used for fuel for muscular contractions. When the protein has completed its role a different enzyme, phosphatase, catalyses hydrolysis of the phosphorylated protein, which reverts to its original state. This cycle takes place to control many metabolic processes.

While the importance of the discovery was not fully recognised in 1955, the discovery became core to explaining one of the fundamental mechanisms that cells use to communicate with one another. Phosphorylation determines how a cell grows, divides, differentiates and eventually dies. The reaction also regulates hormones and proliferation of cancerous cells. The regulation of phosphorylation was determined to be key to understanding diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Many modern drugs build on the work done by Fischer and Krebs including attempting to manipulate the process. For the discovery of the cycle of phosphorylation and hydrolysis Fischer and Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1992, for explaining how the reaction acted as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various biochemical cellular processes.

Throughout his career, Fischer's research continued to look at the role of similar cycling in a variety of cellular processes.

Personal life

Fischer married his first wife, Nelly Gagnaux, in 1948 and they remained married until her death in 1961. He married Beverly Bullock in 1963 who died in 2006. Fischer played the piano and often performed sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart for his friends. He also held a private pilots license and enjoyed flying.

Fischer died on August 27, 2021, in Seattle, Washington. He was aged 101.

Awards and honors

Fischer won numerous awards including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2010. He was awarded the Werner Prize from the Swiss Chemical Society, the Lederle Medical Faculty Award, the Prix Jaubert from the University of Geneva, the Senior Passano Award and the Steven C. Beering Award from Indiana University. He received Doctorates Honoris Causa from the University of Montpellier, France and the University of Basel, Switzerland. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. Fischer was a member of the St. George's University-based Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation (WINDREF) Scientific Advisory Board from 1994 to 2021.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-22 16:13:35

1997) Edwin G. Krebs

Gist

The element phosphorus and phosphate groups, consisting of phosphorous and oxygen atoms, play an important role in several vital biochemical processes. In the mid-1950s Edwin Krebs and Edmond Fischer were able to describe how processes in which proteins emit and absorb phosphate groups can take place in both directions. They demonstrated how the process is governed by special enzymes—proteins that speed up the transformation of other proteins without being incorporated in the final products of the process. These processes are important in the regulation of metabolism in the body and other functions.

Summary

Edwin Gerhard Krebs (born June 6, 1918, Lansing, Iowa, U.S.—died Dec. 21, 2009, Seattle, Wash.) was an American biochemist, winner with Edmond H. Fischer of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. They discovered reversible protein phosphorylation, a biochemical process that regulates the activities of proteins in cells and thus governs countless processes that are necessary for life.

Krebs received a medical degree from Washington University (St. Louis, Mo.) in 1943 and did research there from 1946 to 1948 under the biochemists Carl and Gerty Cori. In 1948 he joined the faculty of biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, and became a full professor in 1957. He moved in 1968 to the University of California at Davis and returned to the University of Washington in 1977.

During the 1950s Krebs and Edmond Fischer began investigating the process by which muscle cells obtain energy from glycogen (the form in which the body stores sugar). The Coris had previously demonstrated that cells use an enzyme called phosphorylase to release glucose (the source of energy in cell function) from glycogen. Krebs and Fischer showed that phosphorylase could be converted from an inactive to an active form by the addition of a phosphate group taken from the compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The enzymes that catalyze this process are called protein kinases. Krebs and Fischer also showed that phosphorylase is inactivated by the removal of a phosphate group; this process is catalyzed by enzymes called phosphatases. Malfunctions in protein phosphorylation have been implicated in the causation of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer disease.

Krebs was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientist from 1977 to 1990. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1989) and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (1989). Krebs also was a coeditor of the multivolume works The Enzymes (1970– ) and Protein Phosphorylation (1981).
Details

Edwin Gerhard Krebs (June 6, 1918 – December 21, 2009) was an American biochemist. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in 1989 together with Alfred Gilman and, together with his collaborator Edmond H. Fischer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes.

Early life and education

Krebs was born in Lansing, Iowa, the third child of William Carl Krebs, a Presbyterian minister and Louise Helen (Stegeman) Krebs. The family moved frequently due to the nature of his father's work, though they settled in Greenville, Illinois when Krebs was six and remained there until his father's unexpected death in 1933. Louise Krebs decided to move her family to Urbana, Illinois, where Krebs's elder brothers were attending the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Krebs attended Urbana High School, and enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign in 1936. In his fourth year of study Krebs had decided to either pursue a higher degree in organic chemistry or study medicine. Receiving a scholarship to attend Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, he chose the latter.

The School of Medicine afforded Krebs the opportunity to train as a physician as well as to gain experience in medical research. Following graduation in 1943, he undertook an 18-month residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis and then went on active duty as a medical officer in the Navy. Krebs was discharged from the Navy in 1946 and was unable to immediately return to hospital work; he was advised to study basic science instead. He chose to study biochemistry and was postdoctoral fellow to Carl and Gerty Cori, working on the interaction of protamine with rabbit muscle phosphorylase. At the completion of his two years' study, Krebs decided to continue his career as a biochemist.

Research work

In 1948 Krebs accepted a position as assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle. When Edmond H. Fischer arrived at the department in 1953, the pair decided to work on the enzymology of phosphorylase. During the course of their study they were able to observe the mechanism by which interconversion of the two forms of phosphorylase takes place: reversible protein phosphorylation.

Explained simply, in reversible protein phosphorylation a protein kinase takes a phosphate group from adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and attaches it to a specific site on a protein, introducing both extra mass and negative charge at that site. This can alter the protein's shape and turn its function in a biological process up or down, either by changing its activity or its ability to bind to another protein. The protein can be converted back to its original state by a protein phosphatase that removes the phosphate. This cycle controls numerous metabolic processes, and plays a central role in the regulation of cell division, shape, and motility. Derangement of specific protein phosphorylation pathways is important in human disease, including cancer and diabetes. Fischer and Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1992 for the discovery of reversible protein phosphorylation.

Later life and death

Krebs's interest in teaching and administration led him to leave the University of Washington to become the founding chairman of the department of biochemistry at the University of California, Davis. In 1977 he returned to the University of Washington as chairman of the department of pharmacology.

Krebs was hearing impaired.

Krebs died on December 21, 2009. His wife, Virginia, died in 2018. He is survived by three children.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-23 16:14:46

1998) Russell Alan Hulse

Gist

Pulsars are very compact stars that radiate radio waves with very regular variations. In 1974 Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor discovered a pulsar comprised of two stars in very close proximity that rotate around each other. Hulse and Taylor could demonstrate that the stars’ radiation and movements correspond with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Among other things, this theory predicts that the pulsar would emit energy in the form of gravitational waves, which should result in slowly declining intervals. Taylor was able to confirm this in 1978.

Summary

Russell Alan Hulse (born November 28, 1950, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American physicist who in 1993 shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with his former teacher, the astrophysicist Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., for their joint discovery of the first binary pulsar.

Hulse studied at Cooper Union College in New York City (B.S., 1970) and earned a Ph.D. degree in physics (1975) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was a graduate student under Taylor. Using the large radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, they discovered dozens of pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit rapid, regular bursts of radio waves. Irregularities in the radio emissions of the pulsar PSR 1913 + 16 led them to deduce that the pulsar had a companion neutron star with which it was locked in a tight orbit. This discovery was made by Taylor and Hulse in 1974.

PSR 1913 + 16 proved doubly important because it provided the first means of detecting gravity waves. The two stars’ enormous interacting gravitational fields were affecting the regularity of the radio pulses, and by timing these and analyzing their variations, Taylor and Hulse found that the stars were rotating ever faster around each other in an increasingly tight orbit. This orbital decay is presumed to occur because the system is losing energy in the form of gravity waves. This finding, as reported by Taylor and Hulse in 1978, afforded the first experimental evidence for the existence of the gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity.

In 1977 Hulse changed fields from astrophysics to plasma physics and joined the Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University. There he conducted research associated with the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, an experimental nuclear-fusion facility. In 2004 Hulse began teaching at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he founded the Science and Engineering Education Center.

Details

Russell Alan Hulse (born November 28, 1950) is an American physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with his thesis advisor Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation".

Biography

Hulse was born in New York City and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and the Cooper Union. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975.

While working on his PhD dissertation, he was a scholar in 1974 at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico of Cornell University. There he worked with Taylor on a large-scale survey for pulsars. It was this work that led to the discovery of the first binary pulsar.

In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered binary pulsar PSR B1913, which is made up of a pulsar and black companion star. Neutron star rotation emits impulses that are extremely regular and stable in the radio wave region and is nearby condensed material body gravitation (non-detectable in the visible field). Hulse, Taylor, and other colleagues have used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity, demonstrating the existence of gravitational radiation. An approximation of this radiant energy is described by the formula of the quadrupolar radiation of Albert Einstein (1918).

In 1979, researchers announced measurements of small acceleration effects of the orbital movements of a pulsar. This was initial proof that the system of these two moving masses emits gravitational waves.

Later years

After receiving his PhD, Hulse did postdoctoral work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. He moved to Princeton, where he has worked for many years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He has also worked on science education, and in 2003 joined the University of Texas at Dallas as a visiting professor of physics and of mathematics and science education.

In 1993, Hulse and Taylor shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the first binary pulsar.

Hulse was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003, and is cited in the American Men and Women of Science.

In 2004, Hulse joined University of Texas at Dallas and became the Founding Director of UT Dallas Science and Engineering Education Center (SEEC).

In July 2007 Hulse joined the Aurora Imaging Technology advisory board.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-24 16:29:55

1999) Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.

Gist

Pulsars are very compact stars that radiate radio waves with very regular variations. In 1974 Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered a pulsar comprised of two stars in very close proximity that rotate around each other. Taylor and Hulse could demonstrate that the stars’ radiation and movements correspond with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Among other things, this theory predicts that the pulsar would emit energy in the form of gravitational waves, which should result in slowly declining intervals. Taylor was able to confirm this in 1978.

Summary

Joseph H. Taylor, Jr. (born March 24, 1941, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American radio astronomer and physicist who, with Russell A. Hulse, was the corecipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint discovery of the first binary pulsar.

Taylor studied at Haverford College, Pennsylvania (B.A., 1963), and earned a Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 1968. He taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, from 1969 to 1981 and then joined the faculty at Princeton University, where he became the James S. McDonnell Professor of Physics in 1986 and professor emeritus in 2006.

Taylor and Hulse conducted their prizewinning research on pulsars while Taylor was a professor at Amherst and Hulse was his graduate student. In 1974, using the large radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, they discovered a pulsar (a rapidly spinning neutron star) emitting radio pulses at intervals that varied in a regular pattern, decreasing and increasing over an eight-hour period. They concluded from these signals that the pulsar must be alternately moving toward and away from the Earth—i.e., that it must be orbiting around a companion star, which the two men deduced was also a neutron star.

Their discovery of the first binary pulsar, PSR 1913 + 16, provided an unprecedented test of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravitation, which, according to the general theory of relativity, predicts that objects accelerated in a strong gravitational field will emit radiation in the form of gravitational waves. With its enormous interacting gravitational fields, the binary pulsar should emit such waves, and the resulting energy drain should reduce the orbital distance between the two stars. This could in turn be measured by a slight, gradual reduction in the timing of the pulsar’s distinctive radio emissions.

Taylor and Hulse timed PSR 1913 + 16’s pulses over the next few years and showed that the two stars are indeed rotating ever faster around each other in an increasingly tight orbit, with an annual decrease of about 75 millionths of a second in their eight-hour orbital period. The rate at which the two stars are spiraling closer together was found to agree with the prediction of the theory of general relativity to an accuracy of better than 0.5 percent. This finding, reported in 1978, provided the first experimental evidence for the existence of gravitational waves and gave powerful support to Einstein’s theory of gravity. In the following years, Taylor continued making careful measurements of the orbital period of PSR 1913 + 16, and his research group went on to discover several other binary pulsars.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Taylor received the Wolf Prize in Physics (1992). He also was awarded a MacArthur fellowship (1981).

Details

Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. (born March 29, 1941) is an American astrophysicist and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics for his discovery with Russell Alan Hulse of a "new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."

Early life and education

Taylor was born in Philadelphia to Joseph Hooton Taylor Sr. and Sylvia Evans Taylor, both of whom had Quaker roots for many generations, and grew up in Cinnaminson Township, New Jersey. He attended the Moorestown Friends School in Moorestown Township, New Jersey, where he excelled in math.

He received a B.A. in physics at Haverford College in 1963, and a Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 1968. After a brief research position at Harvard, Taylor went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, eventually becoming Professor of Astronomy and Associate Director of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Taylor's thesis work was on lunar occultation measurements. About the time he completed his Ph.D., Jocelyn Bell (who is also a Quaker) discovered the first radio pulsars with a telescope near Cambridge, England.

Career

Taylor immediately went to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's telescopes in Green Bank, West Virginia, and participated in the discovery of the first pulsars discovered outside Cambridge. Since then, he has worked on all aspects of pulsar astrophysics.

In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered the first pulsar in a binary system, named PSR B1913+16 after its position in the sky, during a survey for pulsars at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Although it was not understood at the time, this was also the first of what are now called recycled pulsars: Neutron stars that have been spun-up to fast spin rates by the transfer of mass onto their surfaces from a companion star.

The orbit of this binary system is slowly shrinking as it loses energy because of emission of gravitational radiation, causing its orbital period to speed up slightly. The rate of shrinkage can be precisely predicted from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and over a thirty-year period Taylor and his colleagues have made measurements that match this prediction to much better than one percent accuracy. This was the first confirmation of the existence of gravitational radiation. There are now scores of binary pulsars known, and independent measurements have confirmed Taylor's results.

Taylor has used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity. Working with his colleague Joel Weisberg, Taylor has used observations of this pulsar to demonstrate the existence of gravitational radiation in the amount and with the properties first predicted by Albert Einstein. He and Hulse shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of this object. In 1980, he moved to Princeton University, where he was the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Physics, having also served for six years as Dean of Faculty. He retired in 2006.

Amateur radio

Joe Taylor first obtained his amateur radio license as a teenager, which led him to the field of radio astronomy. Taylor is well known in the field of amateur radio weak signal communication and has been assigned the call sign K1JT by the FCC. He had previously held the callsigns K2ITP, WA1LXQ, W1HFV, and VK2BJX (the latter in Australia).

His amateur radio accomplishments have included mounting an 'expedition' in April 2010 to use the Arecibo Radio Telescope to conduct moonbounce with Amateurs around the world using voice, Morse code, and digital communications.

He has been active in developing several computer programs and communications protocols, including WSPR and WSJT ("Weak Signal/Joe Taylor"), a software package and protocol suite that utilizes computer-generated messages in conjunction with radio transceivers to communicate over long distances with other amateur radio operators.

WSJT is useful for passing short messages via non-traditional radio communications methods, such as moonbounce and meteor scatter and other low signal-to-noise ratio paths. It is also useful for extremely long-distance contacts using very low power transmissions.

Taylor was among the first group of MacArthur Fellows. He has served on many boards, committees, and panels, co-chairing the Decadal Panel of that produced the report Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium that established the United States's national priorities in astronomy and astrophysics for the period 2000–2010. He was a guest of honor in the 2009 International Physics Olympiad.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-25 16:53:08

2000) Kary Mullis

Summary

Kary Mullis (born December 28, 1944, Lenoir, North Carolina, U.S.—died August 7, 2019, Newport Beach, California) was an American biochemist, cowinner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a simple technique that allows a specific stretch of DNA to be copied billions of times in a few hours.

After receiving a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973, Mullis held research posts at various universities. In 1979 he joined Cetus Corp., a California biotechnology firm, where he carried out his prizewinning research. From 1986 to 1988 he was director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc., in San Diego, California; thereafter he worked as a freelance consultant.

Mullis developed PCR in 1983. Earlier methods for obtaining a specific sequence of DNA in quantities sufficient for study were difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. PCR uses four ingredients: the double-stranded DNA segment to be copied, called the template DNA; two oligonucleotide primers (short segments of single-stranded DNA, each of which is complementary to a short sequence on one of the strands of the template DNA); nucleotides, the chemical building blocks that make up DNA; and a polymerase enzyme that copies the template DNA by joining the free nucleotides in the correct order. These ingredients are heated, causing the template DNA to separate into two strands. The mixture is cooled, allowing the primers to attach themselves to the complementary sites on the template strands. The polymerase is then able to begin copying the template strands by adding nucleotides onto the end of the primers, producing two molecules of double-stranded DNA. Repeating this cycle increases the amount of DNA exponentially: some 30 cycles, each lasting only a few minutes, will produce more than a billion copies of the original DNA sequence.

PCR has extremely wide applications. In medical diagnostics the technique made it possible to identify the causative agent of a bacterial or viral infection directly from a very small sample of genetic material; it was also used to screen patients for genetic disorders such as sickle cell anemia and Huntington’s chorea.

Details

Kary Banks Mullis (December 28, 1944 – August 7, 2019) was an American biochemist. In recognition of his role in the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and was awarded the Japan Prize in the same year. PCR became a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR."

Mullis downplayed humans' role in climate change, expressed doubt that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and professed a belief in astrology and the paranormal. Mullis's unscientific statements about topics outside his area of expertise have been named by Skeptical Inquirer as an instance of "Nobel disease".

Early life and education

Mullis was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, on December 28, 1944, to Cecil Banks Mullis and Bernice Barker Mullis. His family had a background in farming in this rural area. As a child, Mullis said, he was interested in observing organisms in the countryside. He and his cousins would often taunt livestock by feeding them through electric fences, and Kary was mostly interested in the spiders in his grandparents' basement. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where he attended Dreher High School, graduating in the class of 1962. He recalled his interest in chemistry beginning when he learned how to chemically synthesize and build solid fuel propulsion rockets as a high school student during the 1960s.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1966, during which time he married his first wife, Richards Haley, and started a business. He earned his PhD in 1973 in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), in J. B. Neilands' laboratory, which focused on synthesis and structure of bacterial iron transporter molecules. Although he published a sole-author paper in Nature in the field of astrophysics in 1968, he struggled to pass his oral exams (with a colleague recalling that "He didn’t get his propositions right. He didn’t know general biochemistry"), and his dissertation was accepted only after several friends pitched in to "cut all the whacko stuff out of it" while his advisor lobbied the committee to reconsider its initial decision.

His doctoral dissertation was on the structure of the bacterial siderophore schizokinen. J. B. Neilands was known for his groundbreaking work on siderophores, and Mullis was a part of that with his characterization of schizokinen. Following his graduation, Mullis completed postdoctoral fellowships in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center (1973–1977) and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (1977–1979).

Career

After receiving his doctorate, Mullis briefly left science to write fiction before accepting the University of Kansas fellowship. During his postdoctoral work, he managed a bakery for two years. Mullis returned to science at the encouragement of UC Berkeley friend and colleague Thomas White, who secured Mullis's UCSF position and later helped Mullis land a position with the biotechnology company Cetus Corporation of Emeryville, California. Despite little experience in molecular biology, Mullis worked as a DNA chemist at Cetus for seven years, ultimately serving as head of the DNA synthesis lab under White, then the firm's director of molecular and biological research; it was there, in 1983, that Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure.

Mullis acquired a reputation for erratic behavior at Cetus, once threatening to bring a gun to work; he also engaged in "public lovers' quarrels" with his then-girlfriend (a fellow chemist at the company) and "nearly came to blows with another scientist" at a staff party, according to California Magazine. White recalled: "It definitely put me in a tough spot. His behavior was so outrageous that the other scientists thought that the only reason I didn't fire him outright was that he was a friend of mine."

After resigning from Cetus in 1986, Mullis served as director of molecular biology for Xytronyx, Inc. in San Diego for two years. While inventing a UV-sensitive ink at Xytronyx, he became skeptical of the existence of the ozone hole.

Thereafter, Mullis worked intermittently as a consultant for multiple corporations and institutions on nucleic acid chemistry and as an expert witness specializing in DNA profiling. In 1992, Mullis founded a business to sell pieces of jewelry containing the amplified DNA of deceased famous people such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. In the same year, he also founded Atomic Tags in La Jolla, California. The venture sought to develop technology using atomic-force microscopy and bar-coded antibodies tagged with heavy metals to create highly multiplexed, parallel immunoassays.

Mullis was a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2014, he was named a distinguished researcher at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in Oakland, California.

PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and other inventions

In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corporation as a chemist. Mullis recalled that, while driving in the vicinity of his country home in Mendocino County (with his girlfriend, who also was a chemist at Cetus), he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase; a technique that would allow rapid amplification of a small stretch of DNA and become a standard procedure in molecular biology laboratories. Longtime professional benefactor and supervisor Thomas White reassigned Mullis from his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time after the technique was met with skepticism by their colleagues. Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR on December 16, 1983, but the staff remained circumspect as he continued to produce ambiguous results amid alleged methodological problems, including a perceived lack of "appropriate controls and repetition." In his Nobel Prize lecture, he remarked that the December 16 breakthrough did not make up for his girlfriend breaking up with him: "I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic. Neither [assistant] Fred, empty Beck's bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome."

Other Cetus scientists who were regarded as "top-notch experimentalists", including Randall Saiki, Henry Erlich, and Norman Arnheim, were placed on parallel PCR projects to work on determining if PCR could amplify a specific human gene (betaglobin) from genomic DNA. Saiki generated the needed data and Erlich authored the first paper to include use of the technique, while Mullis was still working on the paper that would describe PCR itself. Mullis's 1985 paper with Saiki and Erlich, "Enzymatic Amplification of β-globin Genomic Sequences and Restriction Site Analysis for Diagnosis of Sickle Cell Anemia" — the polymerase chain reaction invention (PCR) — was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 2017.

A drawback of the technique was that the DNA polymerase in the reaction was destroyed by the high heat used at the start of each replication cycle and had to be replaced. In 1986, Saiki started to use Thermophilus aquaticus (Taq) DNA polymerase to amplify segments of DNA. The Taq polymerase was heat resistant and needed to be added to the reaction only once, making the technique dramatically more affordable and subject to automation. This modification of Mullis's invention revolutionized biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, medicine, and forensics. UC Berkeley biologist David Bilder said, "PCR revolutionized everything. It really superpowered molecular biology—which then transformed other fields, even distant ones like ecology and evolution. … It’s impossible to overstate PCR’s impact. The ability to generate as much DNA of a specific sequence as you want, starting from a few simple chemicals and some temperature changes—it’s just magical." Although he received a $10,000 bonus from Cetus for the invention, the company's later sale of the patent to Roche Molecular Systems for $300 million would lead Mullis to condemn White and members of the parallel team as "vultures."

Mullis also invented a UV-sensitive plastic that changes color in response to light.

He founded Altermune LLC in 2011 to pursue new ideas on the immune system. Mullis described the company's product thusly:

It is a method using specific synthetic chemical linkers to divert an immune response from its nominal target to something completely different which you would right now like to be temporarily immune to. Let's say you just got exposed to a new strain of the flu. You’re already immune to alpha-1,3-galactosyl-galactose bonds. All humans are. Why not divert a fraction of those antibodies to the influenza strain you just picked up. A chemical linker synthesized with an alpha-1,3-gal-gal bond on one end and a DNA aptamer devised to bind specifically to the strain of influenza you have on the other end, will link anti-alpha-Gal antibodies to the influenza virus and presto, you have fooled your immune system into attacking the new virus.

In a TED Talk, Mullis describes how the US Government paid $500,000 for Mullis to use this new technology against anthrax. He said the treatment was 100% effective, compared to the previous anthrax treatment which was 40% effective.

Another proof-of-principle of this technology, re-targeting pre-existing antibodies to the surface of a pathogenic strep bacterium using an alpha-gal modified aptamer ("alphamer"), was published in 2015 in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego. Mullis said he was inspired to fight this particular strep bacterium because it had killed his friend.

Accreditation of the PCR technique

A concept similar to that of PCR had been described before Mullis's work. Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana and Kjell Kleppe, a Norwegian scientist, authored a paper 17 years earlier describing a process they termed "repair replication" in the Journal of Molecular Biology. Using repair replication, Kleppe duplicated and then quadrupled a small synthetic molecule with the help of two primers and DNA polymerase. The method developed by Mullis used repeated thermal cycling, which allowed the rapid and exponential amplification of large quantities of any desired DNA sequence from an extremely complex template. Later a heat-stable DNA polymerase was incorporated into the process.

His co-workers at Cetus contested the notion that Mullis was solely responsible for the idea of using Taq polymerase in PCR. However, biochemist Richard T. Pon has written that the "full potential [of PCR] was not realized" until Mullis's work in 1983, and journalist Michael Gross states that Mullis's colleagues failed to see the potential of the technique when he presented it to them. As a result, some controversy surrounds the balance of credit that should be given to Mullis versus the team at Cetus. In practice, credit has accrued to both the inventor and the company (although not its individual workers) in the form of a Nobel Prize and a $10,000 Cetus bonus for Mullis and $300 million for Cetus when the company sold the patent to Roche Molecular Systems. After DuPont lost out to Roche on that sale, the company unsuccessfully disputed Mullis's patent on the alleged grounds that PCR had been previously described in 1971. Mullis and Erlich took Cetus' side in the case, and Khorana refused to testify for DuPont; the jury upheld Mullis's patent in 1991. However, in February 1999, the patent of Hoffman-La Roche (United States Patent No. 4,889,818) was found by the courts to be unenforceable, after Dr. Thomas Kunkel testified in the case Hoffman-La Roche v. Promega Corporation on behalf of the defendants (Promega Corporation) that "prior art" (i.e. articles on the subject of Taq polymerase published by other groups prior to the work of Gelfand and Stoffel, and their patent application covering the purification of Taq polymerase) existed, in the form of two articles, published by Alice Chien et al. in 1976, and A. S. Kaledin et al. in 1980.

The anthropologist Paul Rabinow wrote a book on the history of the PCR method in 1996, in which he discusses whether Mullis "invented" PCR or merely came up with the concept of it.

Views on HIV/AIDS and climate change

In his 1998 autobiography, Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence for humans' role in climate change and ozone depletion. Mullis claimed that scientific theories about ozone depletion and climate change were the product of scientists and government bureaucrats conspiring to secure funding, saying that "science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out" instead of searching for the truth. The New York Times listed Mullis as one of several scientists who, after success in their area of research, go on to make unfounded, sometimes bizarre statements in other areas, especially in regard to contradicting the scientific consensus on climate change and ozone depletion.

Mullis also questioned the scientific validity of the link between HIV and AIDS, despite never having done any scientific research on either subject, leading Seth Kalichman and Paroma Basu to call him an AIDS denialist. He wrote that he began to question the AIDS consensus while compiling a report for a project's sponsor and being unable to find a published reference for HIV being the cause of AIDS. Mullis published an alternative hypothesis for AIDS in 1994, claiming that AIDS is an arbitrary diagnosis used when HIV antibodies are found in a patient's blood. Seth Kalichman, AIDS researcher and author of Denying AIDS, names Mullis "among the who's who of AIDS pseudoscientists". Mullis was often cited in the press as a supporter of molecular biologist and AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg. According to California Magazine, Mullis's HIV skepticism influenced Thabo Mbeki's denialist policymaking throughout his tenure as president of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, contributing to as many as 330,000 unnecessary deaths.

According to Skeptical Inquirer, Mullis's statements on HIV/AIDS and human-caused climate change are an instance of "Nobel disease", i.e. the tendency of some Nobel laureates to go on to embrace ideas that are scientifically implausible, rejected by most scientific experts, and based mostly on anecdotal or uncorroborated evidence.

Use of hallucinogens

Mullis practiced clandestine chemistry throughout his graduate studies, specializing in the synthesis of LSD; according to his friend Tom White, "I knew he was a good chemist because he'd been synthesizing hallucinogenic drugs at UC Berkeley." He detailed his experiences synthesizing and testing various psychedelic amphetamines and a difficult trip on DET in his autobiography. In a Q&A interview published in the September 1994 issue of California Monthly, Mullis said, "Back in the 1960s and early 1970s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took." During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann said Mullis had told him that LSD had "helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences".

Interest in the supernatural

Mullis expressed interest in the paranormal. For example, he said that he had witnessed the "non-substantial form" of his deceased grandfather, even offering it a beer. In his autobiography, Mullis professed a belief in astrology and wrote about an encounter with a fluorescent, talking raccoon that he suggested might have been an extraterrestrial alien.

Personal life

Mullis was a surfer as well as a musician, being both a guitarist and vocalist. He married four times, and he had three children by two of his wives. At the time of his death, he had two grandchildren and was survived by his fourth wife, Nancy (née Cosgrove). Mullis died on August 7, 2019, at his home in Newport Beach, California, from complications of pneumonia.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-26 15:46:14

2001) Michael Smith (chemist)

Gist

Michael Smith (born April 26, 1932, Blackpool, England—died October 4, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) was a British-born Canadian biochemist who won (with Kary B. Mullis) the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of a technique called oligonucleotide-based site-directed mutagenesis.

From a DNA molecule, an organism's genetic code is transferred to RNA, after which it is converted during protein formation. Around 1980, Michael Smith developed a method by which combined DNA building blocks could be artificially bonded with DNA molecules that were then inserted into an organism where they were copied. The result was an artificial mutation; the genetic code was altered so that specific amino acids in the proteins were replaced. The opportunities this method provides to tailor proteins have been of major importance in both research and industry.

Summary

Michael Smith (born April 26, 1932, Blackpool, England—died October 4, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) was a British-born Canadian biochemist who won (with Kary B. Mullis) the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of a technique called oligonucleotide-based site-directed mutagenesis. This technique enabled researchers to introduce specific mutations into genes and, thus, to the proteins that they encode. Using site-directed mutagenesis, scientists have been able to dissect the structure and function relationships involved in protein plaque formation in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer disease; study the feasibility of gene therapy approaches for cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell disease, and hemophilia; determine the characteristics of protein receptors at neurotransmitter binding sites and design analogs with novel pharmaceutical properties; examine the viral proteins involved in immunodeficiency disease; and improve the properties of industrial enzymes used in food science and technology.

Smith received a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, England, in 1956. Later that year he moved to Vancouver and in 1964 became a Canadian citizen. After holding a number of positions in Canada and the United States, he joined the faculty of the University of British Columbia in 1966, becoming director of the university’s biotechnology laboratory in 1987. He was a founder of ZymoGenetics Inc., a biotechnology company.

Smith first conceived of site-directed mutagenesis in the early 1970s and devoted several years to working out the details of the technique. The method provided researchers with a new way to study protein function. A protein is a compound made up of strings of amino acids that fold into a three-dimensional structure, and the protein’s structure determines its function. Instructions for the amino-acid sequence of a protein are contained in its gene, namely, in the sequence of DNA subunits, called nucleotides, that make up that gene. The amino-acid sequence of a protein, and hence its function, can be modified by inducing mutations in the nucleotide sequence of its gene. Once an altered protein has been produced, its structure and function can be compared to those of the natural protein. Before the advent of Smith’s method, however, the technique biochemical researchers used to create genetic mutations was imprecise, and the haphazard approach made it a difficult and time-consuming task. Smith remedied this situation by developing site-directed mutagenesis, a technique that can be used to modify nucleotide sequences at specific, desired locations within a gene. This has made it possible for researchers to determine the role each amino acid plays in protein structure and function. Aside from its value to basic research, site-directed mutagenesis has many applications in medicine, agriculture, and industry. For example, it can be used to produce a protein variant that is more stable, active, or useful than its natural counterpart.

Details

Michael Smith (April 26, 1932 – October 4, 2000) was a British-born Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis. Following a PhD in 1956 from the University of Manchester, he undertook postdoctoral research with Har Gobind Khorana (himself a Nobel Prize winner) at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Subsequently, Smith worked at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver before being appointed a professor of biochemistry in the UBC Faculty of Medicine in 1966. Smith's career included roles as the founding director of the UBC Biotechnology Laboratory (1987 to 1995) and the founding scientific leader of the Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence (PENCE). In 1996 he was named Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology. Subsequently, he became the founding director of the Genome Sequencing Centre (now called the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre) at the BC Cancer Research Centre.

Education and early life

Smith was born April 26, 1932, in Blackpool, Lancashire, England. He immigrated to Canada in 1956 and became a Canadian citizen in 1963. Smith married Helen Wood Christie on August 6, 1960, on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. The couple had three children (Tom, Ian and Wendy) and three grandchildren, but separated in 1983. In his later years, Smith lived with his partner Elizabeth Raines in Vancouver until his death on October 4, 2000.

Smith first attended St. Nicholas Church of England School, a state-run elementary school. At the time, few children from state schools in England went on to further academic education, however Smith did well in the eleven plus exam, and was an exception. A scholarship enabled him to attend the Arnold School for Boys. A further scholarship allowed him to study Chemistry at the University of Manchester, where he pursued his interest in industrial chemistry and was awarded a BSc followed by a PhD in 1956 for research into the stereochemistry of diols.

Career:

Researcher

Smith's research career began with a post-doctoral fellowship at the British Columbia Research Council under the supervision of Khorana, who was developing new techniques of synthesizing nucleotides. The application of principles of physics and chemistry to living organisms was new at that time; DNA had been identified as the genetic material of a cell, and Khorana and others were investigating how DNA encoded the proteins that constituted an organism. In 1960, when Khorana was offered and accepted a university position with excellent laboratory facilities in the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Smith moved with him.

After a few months in Wisconsin, Smith returned to Vancouver as a senior scientist and head of the Chemistry Division with the Vancouver Technological Station of the Fisheries Research Board (FRB) of Canada. In this role he conducted studies on the feeding habits and survival of spawning salmon, as well as identification of olfactory stimuli guiding salmon to their birth stream. His main research interest, however, continued to be nucleic acid synthesis, for which he received a United States Public Health Service Research Grant.

Concurrently with conducting research for FRB, Smith held the positions of associate professor at the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Department of Biochemistry and honorary professor in the Department of Zoology. In 1966, Smith was appointed a research associate of the Medical Research Council of Canada, working within UBC's Department of Biochemistry.

Smith's particular area of interest remained the synthesis of oligonucleotides and the characterization of their properties. In 1975–1976, a sabbatical at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in England with Fred Sanger placed Smith at the forefront of research into the organization of genes and genomes and methods of sequencing large DNA molecules. He returned from England as one of the world's leading molecular biologists.

Smith and his team began to investigate possibility of the creation of mutations of any site within a viral genome. If possible, this process could be an efficient method to engineer heritable changes in genes. Finally, in 1977 they confirmed Smith's theory.

Site-specific Mutagenesis

In the late 1970s, Smith concentrated on projects in molecular biology and how the genes within the DNA molecule act as reservoirs and transmitters of biological information. In 1978, Smith, in collaboration with former Fred Sanger lab sabbatical colleague Clyde A. Hutchison III, introduced a new technique known as "oligonucleotide-directed site-directed mutagenesis" into molecular biology, resolving the problem of how to efficiently determine the effect of a single mutant gene. They developed a synthetic DNA technique for introducing site-specific mutations into genes. This permitted comparison of different protein molecules, revealing the role of the initial mutation.

The new technology enabled rapid identification and deliberate alteration of genes for the purpose of changing the characteristics of an organism. It raised the level of possibility of new diagnostic strategies and new treatments for genetic diseases, and even creation of novel artificial forms of life, as the progenitor technique for polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Site-Directed Mutagenesis and Synthetic Biology.

The team's paper describing site-directed mutagenesis was published as "Mutagenesis at a Specific Position in a DNA Sequence" in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 1978. For the team's work in developing oligonucleotide-directed site-directed mutagenesis, Smith shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis, the inventor of polymerase chain reaction.

"Using site-directed mutagenesis, scientists have been able to dissect the structure and function relationships involved in protein plaque formation in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer disease; study the feasibility of gene therapy approaches for cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell disease, and hemophilia; determine the characteristics of protein receptors at neurotransmitter binding sites and design analogs with novel pharmaceutical properties; examine the viral proteins involved in immunodeficiency disease; and improve the properties of industrial enzymes used in food science and technology".

Administrator

Smith was an administrator in 1981 at the Faculty of Medicine elected representative to the UBC Senate. He served on the advisory committee of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Evolutionary Biology Program and on the Biotechnology Sector Committee of British Columbia. 1982 Smith launched the Centre for Molecular Genetics in the Faculty of Medicine and became its director in 1986. He was the interim scientific director of the UBC Biomedical Research Centre in 1991.

Biotechnology Laboratory and PENCE

In 1987, the Biotechnology Laboratory, one of three provincial "Centres of Excellence" was established at UBC. The new facility subsumed the Centre for Molecular Genetics, and Smith became its director. He played an important role in drawing together scientists, and in writing the proposal for what would become the "Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence" or PENCE.

Genome Sequence Centre

Throughout the 1980s, Smith and his colleagues at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research advocated for the establishment of a facility that would enable Canada to play a part in what had become known as the Human Genome Project. Eventually, funding was secured from the BC Cancer Agency and in 1999 the Genome Sequence Centre was established with a mandate to develop and deploy genomics technologies in support of the life sciences, and in particular cancer research. The Genome Sciences Centre also provided technology to Genome Canada and Genome BC projects in the areas of human health, the environment, forestry, agriculture, and aquaculture.

Commercial ventures

In 1981 Smith ventured into the business world as a pharmaceutical entrepreneur. In collaboration with Professors Earl W. Davie and Benjamin D. Hall of the University of Washington founded ZymoGenetics in Seattle, Washington, US. The company began working on recombinant proteins in an international initiative with Novo Nordisk of Denmark. Recombinant DNA is used mostly in basic research. ZymoGenetics was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Further applications of recombinant DNA are found in human and veterinary medicine, in agriculture, and in bioengineering.

Awards and honours

Smith received many awards in addition to the Nobel Prize, and was known for his generosity. He donated half of the Nobel Prize money to researchers working on the genetics of schizophrenia. The other half he gave to BC Science World and to the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. He received the Royal Bank Award in 1999, and donated the companion grant to the BC Cancer Foundation.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-27 15:23:18

2002) Richard J. Roberts

Gist

An organism's genes lie within the chain of nucleotides found inside DNA molecules. The genetic information contained within DNA is transferred to messenger RNA, and is then converted during the formation of proteins. An RNA molecule's chain contains both elements needed for protein formation, exons, and parts that are not needed, introns. In 1977 and independently of one another, Richard Roberts and Philip Sharp both successfully demonstrated how RNA can be divided up into introns and exons, after which the exons can be joined together. This can occur in different ways, giving a gene the potential to form a number of different proteins.

Summary

Richard J. Roberts (born Sept. 6, 1943, Derby, Eng.) is a molecular biologist, the winner, with Phillip A. Sharp, of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his independent discovery of “split genes.”

Roberts received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Sheffield, Eng., in 1968. After postdoctoral research at Harvard University, he took a post at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York in 1972. In 1992 he joined New England Biolabs, a biotechnology firm.

In 1977 Roberts and a team including Thomas Broker, Louise Chow, and Richard Gelinas established that the genes of the adenovirus—one of the viruses that cause the common cold—are discontinuous: the segments of DNA that code for proteins are interrupted by lengthy stretches of DNA that do not contain genetic information. The coding segments are called exons; the noncoding ones are called introns. A research team working under Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced the same finding that same year. Previously, based on studies of bacterial DNA, biologists believed that genes consisted of unbroken stretches of DNA, all of which encoded protein structure. It has since been established that the discontinuous gene structure discovered by Roberts and Sharp is the most common structure found in higher organisms (eukaryotes). In addition to having important implications for the study of genetic diseases, this structure is believed to drive evolution by allowing information from different parts of the gene to be brought together in new combinations.

Details

Sir Richard John Roberts (born 6 September 1943) is a British biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing. He currently works at New England Biolabs.

Early life and education

Roberts was born in Derby, the son of Edna (Allsop) and John Roberts, an auto mechanic. When he was four, Roberts' family moved to Bath. In Bath, he attended City of Bath Boys' School. As a child he at first wanted to be a detective and then, when given a chemistry set, a chemist. In 1965 he graduated from the University of Sheffield with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry followed by a PhD in 1969. His thesis involved phytochemical studies of neoflavonoids and isoflavonoids.

Career and research

During 1969–1972, he did postdoctoral research at Harvard University. before moving to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was hired by James Dewey Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and a fellow Nobel laureate. In this period he also visited the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology for the first time, working alongside Fred Sanger. In 1977, he published his discovery of RNA splicing. In 1992, he moved to New England Biolabs. The following year, he shared a Nobel Prize with his former colleague at Cold Spring Harbor Phillip Allen Sharp.

Roberts's discovery of the alternative splicing of genes, in particular, has had a profound impact on the study and applications of molecular biology. The realisation that individual genes could exist as separate, disconnected segments within longer strands of DNA first arose in his 1977 study of adenovirus, one of the viruses responsible for causing the common cold. Robert's research in this field resulted in a fundamental shift in our understanding of genetics, and has led to the discovery of split genes in higher organisms, including human beings.

Awards and honours

In 1992, Roberts received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at Uppsala University, Sweden. After becoming a Nobel laureate in 1993 he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath in 1994. Roberts also received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1994. In 2021 he was awarded the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Roberts was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1995 and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in the same year. In 2005, a multimillion-pound expansion to the chemistry department at the University of Sheffield, where he had been a student, was named after him. A refurbished science department at Beechen Cliff School (previously City of Bath Boys' School) was also named after Roberts, who had donated a substantial sum of his Nobel prize winnings to the school.

Roberts is an atheist and was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. He was knighted in the 2008 Birthday Honours.

Roberts is a member of the Advisory Board of Patient Innovation, a nonprofit, international, multilingual, free venue for patients and caregivers of any disease to share their innovations.

Roberts has been a keynote speaker at the Congress of Future Medical Leaders (2014, 2015, 2016, 2020).

He also is the chairman of The Laureate Science Alliance, a non-profit supporting research worldwide.

In 2016, Roberts and other Nobelists composed and signed a "Laureates Letter Supporting Precision Agriculture (GMOs)" addressed to the leaders of Greenpeace, the United Nations and global governments and Sir Roberts has advocated for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in general and Golden Rice in particular to advance health in developing countries, noting the high safety record of GM foods.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-28 15:47:33

2003) Phillip Allen Sharp

Gist

An organism's genes lie within the chain of nucleotides found inside DNA molecules. The genetic information contained within DNA is transferred to messenger RNA, and is then converted during the formation of proteins. An RNA molecule's chain contains both elements needed for protein formation, exons, and parts that are not needed, introns. In 1977 and independently of one another, Philip Sharp and Richard Roberts both successfully demonstrated how RNA can be divided up into introns and exons, after which the exons can be joined together. This can occur in different ways, giving a gene the potential to form a number of different proteins.

Summary

Phillip A. Sharp (born June 6, 1944, Falmouth, Ky., U.S.) is an American molecular biologist, awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Richard J. Roberts, for his independent discovery that individual genes are often interrupted by long sections of DNA that do not encode protein structure.

Sharp received a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1969. In that year he began working at the California Institute of Technology, moving to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York in 1971. In 1974 he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he joined the Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research) and conducted his prize-winning experiments.

In 1977 Sharp and his team discovered that the messenger RNA (mRNA) of an adenovirus corresponded to four separate, discontinuous segments of DNA. They found that the segments of DNA that coded for proteins, now called exons, were separated by long stretches of DNA, now called introns, that did not contain genetic information. At the same time, a team working independently under Roberts came up with the same finding. Previously biologists had believed that genes were continuous stretches of DNA that served as direct templates for mRNA in the assembly of proteins; this model was based on studies of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria. Following the discovery of Sharp and Roberts, it was demonstrated that the discontinuous gene structure is the most common one found in eukaryotes, among which are all higher organisms, including humans.

In 1978 Sharp cofounded a pharmaceutical company called Biogen Ltd. (now Biogen Idec), which later developed agents to treat hairy-cell leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and certain autoimmune disorders. Subsequent studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of them carried out in Sharp’s laboratory, showed that DNA transcription initially produces a precursor RNA molecule containing copies of the introns; the final mRNA molecule is produced by the removal of the introns and the splicing together of the exons. A significant proportion of genetic diseases result from mutations that arise during splicing. Biologists also believe that the discontinuous structure of genes may be an evolutionary mechanism, permitting the “reshuffling” of exons and thus the synthesis of new proteins.

In 1988 Sharp received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for his discoveries relating to RNA splicing. He served as head of the biology department at MIT from 1991 to 1999, when he earned the title Institute Professor at the Koch Institute. Following his work on introns and splicing, he began investigating the role of RNA in controlling genes. Sharp’s research had direct implications on the development of new therapeutics, which led to his involvement as cofounder of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in 2002. From 2000 to 2004 he directed the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, then returned full time to his position in the Koch Institute. In 2004 Sharp was awarded the National Medal of Science for his research and discoveries based on the application of RNA interference (RNAi) technology to genetic studies in cells. In 2006 he cofounded a small biotechnology company called Magen BioSciences, Inc., which focused on the development of drugs to treat dermatological disorders, such as psoriasis and rosacea.

Details

Phillip Allen Sharp (born June 6, 1944) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence". He has been selected to receive the 2015 Othmer Gold Medal.

Sharp's current research focuses on small RNAs and other types of non-coding RNAs. His laboratory works to identify the target mRNAs of microRNAs (miRNAs), and has discovered a class of miRNAs that are produced from sequences adjacent to transcription start sites. His laboratory also studies how miRNA gene regulation functions in angiogenesis and cellular stress.

Biography

Sharp was born in Falmouth, Kentucky, the son of Kathrin (Colvin) and Joseph Walter Sharp. He married Ann Holcombe in 1964, and they have three daughters.

Sharp studied at Union College and majored in chemistry and mathematics, afterwards completing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1969. Following his Ph.D., he did his postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology until 1971, where he studied plasmids. Later, he studied gene expression in human cells at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a senior scientist under James D. Watson.

In 1974, he was offered a position at MIT by biologist Salvador Luria. He was director of MIT's Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research) from 1985 to 1991; head of the Biology department from 1991 to 1999; and founder and director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research from 2000 to 2004. In 1995, the FBI confirmed that Sharp received a letter from Ted Kaczynski, insinuating that Sharp would become a target of the Unabomber because of his work in genetics, stating that "it would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics."

He is currently MIT Institute Professor and Professor of Biology Emeritus and member of the Koch Institute, and was an Institute Professor, MIT's highest faculty rank, since 1999. He is also the chair of the advisory board of the MIT Jameel Clinic. Sharp co-founded Biogen, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, and Magen Biosciences, and has served on the boards of all three companies.

Awards and honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Sharp has won several notable awards, including the 2004 National Medal of Science, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the American Philosophical Society, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1981, and the 1988 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Thomas R. Cech.

Sharp is an elected member of several academic societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2011. In 2012, he was elected the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a Member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Fidelity Biosciences Group; a member of the Board of Advisors of Polaris Venture Partners; chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and member of the Board of Directors of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals; advisor and investor at Longwood and Polaris Venture Funds; a member of the Boards of Directors at Syros Pharmaceuticals and VIR Biotechnology; and member and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Dewpoint Biotechnology.

Pendleton County, Kentucky, Sharp's birthplace, named its current middle school after him.

Other activities

In October 2010, Sharp participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students got to engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch. Sharp is also a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board. In 2011, he was listed at #5 on the MIT150 list of the top 150 innovators and ideas from MIT.

He is an editorial advisor to Xconomy, and is a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He has also served on the Faculty Advisory Board of the MIT-Harvard Research Journal and MIT Student Research Association.

In 2016, Sharp helped organize the Laureates Letter Supporting Precision Agriculture, written to oppose efforts by Greenpeace to ban GMOs and Golden Rice in particular.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-29 15:27:57

2004) Bertram Brockhouse

Gist

Atomic nuclei are composed of protons and neutrons. Bertram Brockhouse and Clifford Shull developed methods for investigating different materials with beams of neutrons created in a nuclear reactor. When neutron beams come in contact with a material, some of the neutron’s energy is converted into vibrations. The vibrations, known as phonons, correspond to fixed energy levels that form a spectrum. During the 1950s Bertram Brockhouse developed methods for using these spectrums to chart properties of different molecules and materials.

Summary

Bertram N. Brockhouse (born July 15, 1918, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada—died October 13, 2003, Hamilton, Ontario) was a Canadian physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1994 with American physicist Clifford G. Shull for their separate but concurrent development of neutron-scattering techniques.

Brockhouse was educated at the University of British Columbia (B.A., 1947) and at the University of Toronto (M.A., 1948; Ph.D., 1950). He conducted his award-winning work from 1950 to 1962 at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory, a facility operated by Atomic Energy of Canada. Brockhouse was a professor at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) from 1962 until his retirement in 1984.

In neutron-scattering techniques, a beam of neutrons is aimed at a target material, and the resultant scattering of the neutrons yields information about that material’s atomic structure. Brockhouse developed a variant technique known as inelastic neutron scattering, in which the relative energies of the scattered neutrons are measured to yield additional data. He used inelastic neutron scattering in his pioneering examination of phonons, which are units of the lattice vibrational energy expended by the scattered neutrons. He also developed the neutron spectrometer and was one of the first to measure the phonon dispersion curve of a solid.

Details

Bertram Neville Brockhouse, (July 15, 1918 – October 13, 2003) was a Canadian physicist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1994, shared with Clifford Shull) "for pioneering contributions to the development of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter", in particular "for the development of neutron spectroscopy".

Education and early life

Brockhouse was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, to a family of English descent. He was a graduate of the University of British Columbia (BA, 1947) and the University of Toronto (MA, 1948; Ph.D, 1950).

Career and research

From 1950 to 1962, Brockhouse carried out research at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory. Here he was joined by P. K. Iyengar, who is treated as the father of India's nuclear program.

In 1962, he became a professor at McMaster University in Canada, where he remained until his retirement in 1984.

Brockhouse died on October 13, 2003, in Hamilton, Ontario, aged 85.

Awards and honours

Brockhouse was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1965. In 1982, Brockhouse was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1995.

Brockhouse shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics with American Clifford Shull of MIT for developing neutron scattering techniques for studying condensed matter.

In October 2005, as part of the 75th anniversary of McMaster University's establishment in Hamilton, Ontario, a street on the University campus (University Avenue) was renamed to Brockhouse Way in honour of Brockhouse. The town of Deep River, Ontario, has also named a street in his honour.

The Nobel Prize that Bertram Brockhouse won (shared with Clifford Shull) in 1994 was awarded after the longest-ever waiting time (counting from the time when the award-winning research had been carried out).

In 1999 the Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (DCMMP) and the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) created a medal in honour of Brockhouse. The medal is called the Brockhouse Medal and is awarded to recognize and encourage outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter and materials physics. This medal is awarded annually on the basis of outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter physics. An eligible candidate must have performed their research primarily with a Canadian Institution.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-30 15:18:22

2005) Clifford Shull

Gist

Atomic nuclei are composed of protons and neutrons. Clifford Shull and Bertram Brockhouse developed methods for investigating different materials with beams of neutrons created in a nuclear reactor. According to principles of quantum mechanics, neutrons and other particles can be described as a wave movement, and neutron radiation that passes a regular atomic structure gives rise to diffraction patterns. In 1946 Shull developed methods to make use of this to determine the structure of different molecules and materials.

Summary

Clifford G. Shull (born September 23, 1915, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died March 31, 2001, Medford, Massachusetts) was an American physicist who was corecipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physics for his development of neutron-scattering techniques—in particular, neutron diffraction, a process that enabled scientists to better explore the atomic structure of matter. He shared the prize with Canadian physicist Bertram N. Brockhouse, who conducted separate but concurrent work in the field.

Shull was educated at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (B.S., 1937) and New York University (Ph.D., 1941) and began a career as a research physicist. His award-winning work was completed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee from 1946 to 1955, under the leadership of Ernest O. Wollan, the pioneer of neutron-scattering research. In the technique of neutron diffraction, a beam of single-wavelength neutrons is passed through the material under study. Neutrons hitting atoms of the target material are scattered into a pattern that, when recorded on photographic film, yields information about the relative positions of atoms in the material. Shull was also one of the first to demonstrate magnetic diffraction, and he helped to develop instrumentation for the routine crystallographic analysis of neutrons. From 1955 until his retirement in 1986 he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Details

Clifford Glenwood Shull (September 23, 1915 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – March 31, 2001) was an American physicist.

Biography

Shull attended Schenley High School in Pittsburgh, received his BS from Carnegie Institute of Technology and PhD from New York University. He worked for The Texas Company at Beacon, New York during the wartime, followed by a position in the Clinton Laboratory (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and finally joined MIT in 1955, and retired in 1986.

He died on March 31, 2001, at the age 85.

Research

Clifford G. Shull was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics with Canadian Bertram Brockhouse. The two won the prize for the development of the neutron scattering technique. He also conducted research on condensed matter. Professor Shull's prize was awarded for his pioneering work in neutron scattering, a technique that reveals where atoms are within a material like ricocheting bullets reveal where obstacles are in the dark.

When a beam of neutrons is directed at a given material, the neutrons bounce off, or are scattered by, atoms in the sample being investigated. The neutrons' directions change, depending on the location of the atoms they hit, and a diffraction pattern of the atoms' positions can then be obtained. Understanding where atoms are in a material and how they interact with one another is the key to understanding a material's properties.

"Then we can think of how we can make better window glass, better semiconductors, better microphones. All of these things go back to understanding the basic science behind their operation," Professor Shull, then 79, said on the day of the Nobel announcement. ...

He started [his pioneering work] in 1946 at what is now Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At that time, he said, "Scientists at Oak Ridge were very anxious to find real honest-to-goodness scientific uses for the information and technology that had been developed during the war at Oak Ridge and at other places associated with the wartime Manhattan Project."

Professor Shull teamed up with Ernest Wollan, and for the next nine years they explored ways of using the neutrons produced by nuclear reactors to probe the atomic structure of materials.

In Professor Shull's opinion the most important problem he worked on at the time dealt with determining the positions of hydrogen atoms in materials.

"Hydrogen atoms are ubiquitous in all biological materials and in many other inorganic materials," he once said, "but you couldn't see them with other techniques. With neutrons it turned out that that was completely different, and we were very pleased and happy to find that we could learn things about hydrogen-containing structures."

As he refined the scattering technique, Professor Shull studied the fundamental properties of the neutron itself. He also initiated the first neutron diffraction investigations of magnetic materials. ... "If there is a ... 'Father of Neutron Scattering' in the United States, it is Professor Shull," wrote Anthony Nunes ..., professor of physics at the University of Rhode Island. ...

Professor Shull came to MIT as a full professor in 1955 and retired in 1986, though he continued to visit and to "look over the shoulders" of students doing experiments in the "remnants of my old research laboratory."

Professor Shull's awards include the Buckley Prize, which he received from the American Physical Society in 1956, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1956) and to the National Academy of Sciences (1975). In 1993 he received the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' Gregori Aminoff prize for his "development and application of neutron diffraction methods for studies of atomic and magnetic structures of solids."'

Jai Ganesh · 2024-07-31 16:09:14

2006) George Andrew Olah

Gist

Chemical reactions in which molecules composed of atoms collide and form new compounds represent one of nature’s fundamental processes. Carbocations are electrically charged molecules in which the charge is concentrated on one carbon atom. They play an important role as intermediate stages in chemical reactions and have very short life spans. At the beginning of the 1960s, George Olah used very strong acids to produce carbocations in solution with life spans long enough so they could be studied.

Summary

George A. Olah (born May 22, 1927, Budapest, Hungary—died March 8, 2017, Beverly Hills, California, U.S.) was a Hungarian American chemist who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work conducted in the early 1960s that isolated the positively charged, electron-deficient fragments of hydrocarbons known as carbocations (or carbonium ions).

In 1949 Olah received a doctorate from the Technical University of Budapest, where he taught until 1954. He worked at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for two years before emigrating from Hungary during the revolution of 1956. He became a research scientist at the Dow Chemical Company in Canada (1957–64) and in Framingham, Massachusetts, U.S. (1964–65). He was a professor at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (1965–1977), before joining the faculty of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, where he became director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute in 1980.

Although theoretically recognized for several decades as a common intermediate in many organic reactions, carbocations were unobservable because they are a short-lived, unstable class of compound. Olah was able to successfully disassemble, examine, and then recombine carbocations through the use of superacids and ultracold solvents. His breakthrough, announced in 1962, initiated a new branch of organic chemistry and led to the development of innovative carbon-based fuels and higher-octane gasoline.
Details

George Andrew Olah (born Oláh András György; May 22, 1927 – March 8, 2017) was a Hungarian-American chemist. His research involved the generation and reactivity of carbocations via superacids. For this research, Olah was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994 "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry." He was also awarded the Priestley Medal, the highest honor granted by the American Chemical Society and F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research of the American Chemical Society in 1996.

After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he emigrated to the United Kingdom, which he left for Canada in 1964, finally resettling in the United States in 1965. According to György Marx, he was one of The Martians.

Early life and education

Olah was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 22, 1927, into a Jewish couple, Magda (Krasznai) and Gyula Oláh, a lawyer. After the high school of Budapesti Piarist Gimnazium, he studied under organic chemist Géza Zemplén at the Technical University of Budapest, now the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where he earned M.S. and Ph.D degrees in chemical engineering. From 1949 through 1954, he taught at the school as a professor of organic chemistry. In the subsequent two years, from 1954 to 1956, he worked at the research institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where he was associate scientific director and head of the department of organic chemistry.

Career and research

As a result of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, he and his family moved briefly to England and then to Canada, where he joined Dow Chemical in Sarnia, Ontario, with another Hungarian chemist, Stephen J. Kuhn. Olah's pioneering work on carbocations started during his eight years with Dow. In 1965, he returned to academia at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, chairing the department of chemistry from 1965 to 1969, and from 1967 through 1977 he was the C. F. Maybery Distinguished Professor of Research in Chemistry. In 1971, Olah became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He then moved to the University of Southern California in 1977.

At USC, Olah was a distinguished professor and the director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. Starting in 1980, he served as the Distinguished Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of Chemistry and later became a distinguished professor in USC's school of engineering. In 1994, Olah was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contribution to carbocation chemistry". In particular, Olah's search for stable nonclassical carbocations led to the discovery of protonated methane stabilized by superacids, like FSO3H-SbF5 ("Magic Acid").

CH4 + H+ → CH5+
Because these cations were able to be stabilized, scientists could now use infrared spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to study them in greater depth, as well as use them as catalysts in organic synthesis reactions.

Olah, with Canadian chemist Saul Winstein, was also involved in a career-long battle with Herbert C. Brown of Purdue over the existence of so-called "nonclassical" carbocations – such as the norbornyl cation, which can be depicted as cationic character delocalized over several bonds. Olah's studies of the cation with NMR spectroscopy provided more evidence suggesting that Winstein's model of the non-classical cation, "featuring a pair of [delocalized] electrons smeared between three carbon atoms," was correct.

In 1997, the Olah family formed an endowment fund (the George A. Olah Endowment) which grants annual awards to outstanding chemists, including the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry, formerly known as the ACS Award in Petroleum Chemistry. The awards are selected and administered by the American Chemical Society.

Later in his career, his research shifted from hydrocarbons and their transformation into fuel to the methanol economy, namely generating methanol from methane. He joined with Robert Zubrin, Anne Korin, and James Woolsey in promoting a flexible-fuel mandate initiative. In 2005, Olah wrote an essay promoting the methanol economy in which he suggested that methanol could be produced from hydrogen gas (H2) and industrially derived or atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), using energy from renewable sources to power the production process.

Personal life

He married Judit Ágnes Lengyel (Judith Agnes Lengyel) in 1949, and they had two children, György (George), born in Hungary in 1954, and Ronald, born in the U.S. in 1959. Olah died on March 8, 2017, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. After his death, the Hungarian government said that the "country has lost a great patriot and one of the most outstanding figures of Hungarian scientific life."

Jai Ganesh · 2024-08-01 15:20:42

2007) Alfred G. Gilman

Gist

In order for an organism to function, signals are conveyed within and between the body’s various organs and cells through electrical currents and special molecules. Alfred Gilman and Martin Rodbell showed how the signal transfer through the cell wall happens. Around 1970 Rodbell demonstrated that the signal transfer occurs in three steps—reception, transfer and reinforcement—and that guanosine triphosphate is a driving force in the transfer. In 1980 Gilman discovered that molecules involved in the transfer are a type of protein that reacts with GTP—G proteins.

Summary

Alfred G. Gilman (born July 1, 1941, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.—died December 23, 2015, Dallas, Texas) was an American pharmacologist who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with American biochemist Martin Rodbell for their separate research in discovering molecules called G proteins. These are intermediaries in the multistep pathway cells use to react to an incoming signal, such as a hormone or neurotransmitter.

Gilman attended Yale University (B.S., 1962) and Case Western Reserve University (M.D. and Ph.D., 1969), where he studied under Nobel Prize recipient Earl W. Sutherland, Jr. Following three years of postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health, Gilman took a position as a pharmacology professor at the University of Virginia, where he conducted his seminal research. In 1981 he became chairman of the pharmacology department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s medical school in Dallas, where he was elected executive vice president for academic affairs and provost in 2006. Three years later he left to become chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (2009–12).

In the 1960s Rodbell demonstrated that a cell’s response to a chemical signal involves not only a receptor for the signal at the cell’s surface and an amplifier that functions within the cell, as was already known, but also an intermediary molecule that transduces, or relays, the message from receptor to amplifier. Gilman, working in the 1970s with mutant cells that were unable to send signals properly, identified the intermediary signaling molecule as a G protein, so named because it becomes activated when bound to a molecule called guanosine triphosphate (GTP). Abnormally functioning G proteins can disrupt the normal signal transduction process and play a role in diseases such as cholera, cancer, and diabetes.

Gilman edited several editions of Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, one of the most-respected works in the field of pharmacology; Gilman’s father cowrote the first edition, which was published in 1941. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Gilman was the recipient of numerous honours. Notably, he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1985, and he was a 1989 recipient of the Lasker Award for basic medical research.

Details

Alfred Goodman Gilman (July 1, 1941 – December 23, 2015) was an American pharmacologist and biochemist. He and Martin Rodbell shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells."

Gilman was the son of Alfred Gilman, who co-authored Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics with Louis S. Goodman, from whom his middle name came. He earned a BA in biology with major in biochemistry from Yale University. Immediately after graduation in 1962, he worked with Allan Conney at Burroughs Wellcome & Company, which resulted in the publication of his first two technical papers. Persuaded by Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., he joined Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine for an MD-PhD course. He obtained his degree in 1969. He then went to the National Institutes of Health to work with Marshall Nirenberg between 1969 and 1971.

Gilman became assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1971, and full professor in 1977. He chaired the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas from 1981. Upon his retirement in 2009, he was appointed chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. He resigned in 2012. He was the founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals company and the Alliance for Cellular Signaling. From 2005, he was also director of Eli Lilly and Company.

G proteins are a vital intermediary between the extracellular activation of receptors (G protein-coupled receptors) on the cell membrane and actions within the cell. Rodbell had shown in the 1960s that GTP was involved in cell signaling. It was Gilman who actually discovered the proteins that interacted with the GTP to initiate signalling cascades within the cell, and thus, giving the name G proteins.

For his works, he received the Canada Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1984, Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1989, in addition to Nobel Prize. He was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, and, since 2013 (or earlier), member of the advisory council of the National Center for Science Education.

Contributions:

Discovery of G protein

In the 1960s, Earl Sutherland and Theodore Rall discovered that cyclic AMP (the second messenger in signal transduction) was a responsible for activating enzymes in the cell, and that cyclic AMP is produced only when hormones (the first messengers) bind on the cell surface. Cyclic AMP is formed from ATP by the enzymes adenylyl cyclase. In 1970 Martin Rodbell found that hormones did not directly influence cyclic AMP, but there existed other molecules, the third messengers. Rodbell discovered that cyclic AMP is activated when guanosine triphosphate (GTP) is released from the cell membrane. He, however, did not know how the GTP molecules were produced. Gilman pursued the mystery in the signalling process. He found that in lymphoma (cancer) cells, hormones lost their activity to activate adenylyl cyclase, thereby losing their ability to produce cyclic AMP. This was due to loss of proteins in these cancer cells. When he introduced the missing protein from normal cells into the cancer cells, normal hormone action was produced. This showed that the missing membrane protein was responsible for mediating hormonal signal to cyclic AMP by producing GTP. His findings were published in a series of papers between 1977 and 1979. In 1980, he succeeded in identifying and isolating the new protein, which he named G protein, as it specifically binds to GTP molecules.

Defending science education

Gilman played active roles in defending science education, and opposing creationism. He opposed the Texas state board of education in 2003 when the board tried to remove evolution from science curriculum. He was the leader of scientists of the US National Academy of Sciences, including Nobel laureates, to publicly criticize the board in The Dallas Morning News. He eventually became member of the advisory council of the National Centre for Science Education. He also opposed the Institute for Creation Research on its application for certification of its graduate course. He commented: "How can Texas simultaneously launch a war on cancer and approve educational platforms that submit that the universe is 10,000 years old?" He was also one of the signatories on the petition against the Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008.

Awards and honours

Gilman was given the Canada Gairdner International Award in 1984 "For elucidating the mechanism by which peptide hormones act across cell membranes to influence cell function." He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research as well as the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1989 together with Edwin Krebs. In 1995, Gilman received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2005, he was elected as Dean of University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas. He served on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He was elected Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy in 2013. He was elected member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received honorary doctorates from Case Western Reserve University, Yale University, University of Chicago, and University of Miami.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-08-02 15:55:27

2008) Martin Rodbell

Gist

In order for an organism to function, signals are conveyed within and between the body’s various organs and cells through electrical currents and special molecules. Martin Rodbell and Alfred Gilman showed how the signal transfer through the cell wall happens. Around 1970 Rodbell demonstrated that the signal transfer occurs in three steps—reception, transfer and reinforcement—and that guanosine triphosphate is a driving force in the transfer. In 1980 Gilman discovered that molecules involved in the transfer are a type of protein that reacts with GTP—G proteins.

Summary

Martin Rodbell (born December 1, 1925, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died December 7, 1998, Chapel Hill, North Carolina) was an American biochemist who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery in the 1960s of natural signal transducers called G-proteins that help cells in the body communicate with each other. He shared the prize with American pharmacologist Alfred G. Gilman, who later proved Rodbell’s hypothesis by isolating the G-protein, which is so named because it binds to nucleotides called guanosine diphosphate and guanosine triphosphate, or GDP and GTP.

After graduating from Johns Hopkins University (B.A., 1949) and from the University of Washington (Ph.D., 1954), Rodbell began his career as a biochemist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. From 1985 until his retirement in 1994 he worked at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, near Durham, North Carolina.

Prior to Rodbell’s research, scientists believed that only two substances—a hormone receptor and an interior cell enzyme—were responsible for cellular communication. Rodbell, however, discovered that the G-protein acted as an intermediate signal transducer between the two. Despite initial opposition, his theories gained acceptance, and subsequently more than 20 G-proteins were identified. His research led to better understanding of many diseases, including cholera, diabetes, alcoholism, and cancer.

Details

Martin Rodbell (December 1, 1925 – December 7, 1998) was an American biochemist and molecular endocrinologist who is best known for his discovery of G-proteins. He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alfred G. Gilman for "their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells."

Biography

Rodbell was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Shirley (née Abrams) and Milton Rodbell, a grocer. His family was Jewish. After graduating from the Baltimore City College high school, he entered Johns Hopkins University in 1943, with interests in biology and French existential literature. In 1944, his studies were interrupted by his military service as a U.S. Navy radio operator during World War II. He returned to Hopkins in 1946 and received his B.S. in biology in 1949. In 1950, he married Barbara Charlotte Ledermann, a former friend of Margot Frank, diarist Anne Frank's older sister. Martin and Barbara had four children. Rodbell received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Washington in 1954. He did post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1954 to 1956. In 1956, Rodbell accepted a position as a research biochemist at the National Heart Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1985, Rodbell became Scientific Director of the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina where he worked until his retirement in 1994. He was also adjunct professor of Cell Biology at Duke University (from 1991 to 1998) and adjunct professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He died in Chapel Hill of multiple organ failure after an extended illness.

Research

Reflecting the increasingly common analogies between computer science and biology in the 1960s, Rodbell believed that the fundamental information processing systems of both computers and biological organisms were similar. He asserted that individual cells were analogous to cybernetic systems made up of three distinct molecular components: discriminators, transducers, and amplifiers (otherwise known as effectors). The discriminator, or cell receptor, receives information from outside the cell; a cell transducer processes this information across the cell membrane; and the amplifier intensifies these signals to initiate reactions within the cell or to transmit information to other cells.

In December 1969 and early January 1970, Rodbell was working with a laboratory team that studied the effect of the hormone glucagon on a rat liver membrane receptor—the cellular discriminator that receives outside signals. Rodbell discovered that ATP (adenosine triphosphate) could reverse the binding action of glucagon to the cell receptor and thus dissociate the glucagon from the cell altogether. He then noted that traces of GTP (guanosine triphosphate) could reverse the binding process almost one thousand times faster than ATP. Rodbell deduced that GTP was probably the active biological factor in dissociating glucagon from the cell's receptor, and that GTP had been present as an impurity in his earlier experiments with ATP. This GTP, he found, stimulated the activity in the guanine nucleotide protein (later called the G-protein), which, in turn, produced profound metabolic effects in the cell. This activation of the G-protein, Rodbell postulated, was the "second messenger" process that Earl W. Sutherland had theorized. In the language of signal transduction, the G-protein, activated by GTP, was the principal component of the transducer, which was the crucial link between the discriminator and the amplifier. Later, Rodbell postulated, and then provided evidence for, additional G-proteins at the cell receptor that could inhibit and activate transduction, often at the same time. In other words, cellular receptors were sophisticated enough to have several different processes going on simultaneously.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-08-03 15:59:00

2009) Martin Lewis Perl

Gist:

Life

Martin Perl was born in Brooklyn and was of Russian-Jewish extraction. His father ran a printing business and his mother worked for a textile firm. He was a good student and won a physics prize in high school, but he thought no more of it because he did not believe one could make a living in research. He first studied to be a chemical engineer. He did not take up physics until later, at age 23. He received his doctorate at Columbia and later worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, where he remained for the rest of his life. He had three sons and one daughter.

Work

According to modern physics, everything in the universe is composed of small building blocks—particles that can be arranged in a model with different families. Many particles do not exist in nature, but can be created in experiments where they quickly disintegrate into other particles, leaving trails behind them. In a series of experiments from 1974 to 1977 in which electrons and positrons were made to collide, Martin Perl discovered a new particle—the tau particle. The discovery meant that there was an additional family of particles alongside two previously known families.

Summary

Martin Lewis Perl (born June 24, 1927, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died September 30, 2014, Palo Alto, California) was an American physicist who received the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering a subatomic particle that he named the tau, a massive lepton with a negative charge. The tau, which he found in the mid-1970s, was the first evidence of a third “generation” of fundamental particles, the existence of which proved essential for completing the so-called standard model of particle physics. Perl was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize with physicist Frederick Reines, who had discovered another subatomic particle, the neutrino, in the 1950s.

In 1948 Perl graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering) with a degree in chemical engineering. After working as a chemical engineer for two years, he studied nuclear physics at Columbia University (Ph.D., 1955). He was an instructor and associate professor at the University of Michigan (1955–63) before joining (1963) the faculty of Stanford University, where he remained, becoming professor emeritus in 2004.

In 1966 Perl was part of a research team that made an unsuccessful attempt to discover new charged leptons by colliding electrons at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). A new particle accelerator that began operation at SLAC in the early 1970s had the capacity to reach high energy levels that were previously inaccessible. With this new machine, Perl recorded frontal collisions between electrons and their antiparticles, positrons. In a series of experiments conducted between 1974 and 1977, he found that the collisions formed heavy leptons, later called tau particles, that decay in less than a trillionth of a second into neutrinos and either an electron or a muon. He also discovered the antitau, which decays into neutrinos and either a positron or an antimuon. Despite his formal retirement from SLAC, Perl remained a collaborator there on numerous projects, which at the time of his death included one investigating dark energy.

Details

Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton.

Life and career

Perl was born in New York City, New York. His parents, Fay (née Resenthal), a secretary and bookkeeper, and Oscar Perl, a stationery salesman who founded a printing and advertising company, were Jewish immigrants to the US from the Polish area of Russia.

Perl was a 1948 chemical engineering graduate of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now known as NYU-Tandon) in Brooklyn. After graduation, Perl worked for the General Electric Company, as a chemical engineer in a factory producing electron vacuum tubes. To learn about how the electron tubes worked, Perl signed up for courses in atomic physics and advanced calculus at Union College in Schenectady, New York, which led to his growing interest in physics, and eventually to becoming a graduate student in physics in 1950.

He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1955, where his thesis advisor was I.I. Rabi. Perl's thesis described measurements of the nuclear quadrupole moment of sodium, using the atomic beam resonance method that Rabi had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for in 1944.

Following his Ph.D., Perl spent 8 years at the University of Michigan, where he worked on the physics of strong interactions, using bubble chambers and spark chambers to study the scattering of pions and later neutrons on protons. While at Michigan, Perl and Lawrence W. Jones served as co-advisors to Samuel C. C. Ting, who earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976.

Seeking a simpler interaction mechanism to study, Perl started to consider electron and muon interactions. He had the opportunity to start planning experimental work in this area when he moved in 1963 to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), then being built in California. He was particularly interested in understanding the muon: why it should interact almost exactly like the electron but be 206.8 times heavier, and why it should decay through the route that it does. Perl chose to look for answers to these questions in experiments on high-energy charged leptons. In addition, he considered the possibility of finding a third generation of lepton through electron-positron collisions.

Perl is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

He died after a heart attack at Stanford University Hospital on September 30, 2014, at the age of 87. His son, Jed Perl, is an author and art critic for The New Republic.

Nobel Prize and later career

Perl won the Nobel Prize in 1995 jointly with Frederick Reines. The prize was awarded "for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics". Perl received half "for the discovery of the tau lepton" while Reines received his share "for the detection of the neutrino". In 1996 he published Reflections on Experimental Science, which consists of "comments, scientific reprints, reflections, and a memoir ...".

He joined University of Liverpool as a visiting professor. He served on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government. In 1996, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2009, Perl received an honorary doctorate from the University of Belgrade.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-08-04 15:58:05

2010) Frederick Reines

Gist

During the beta decay of a nucleus, a neutron is converted to a proton and an electron is produced. In studying the electron’s velocity, it was clear that this decay violated energy-conversation and other laws. It was thus proposed that an additional particle—a neutrino—was formed during beta decay. In the early 1950s, Frederick Reines passed radiation from a nuclear reactor through a water tank and discovered reactions that proved the neutrino’s existence.

Summary

Frederick Reines (born March 16, 1918, Paterson, N.J., U.S.—died Aug. 26, 1998, Orange, Calif.) was an American physicist who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery 40 years earlier, together with his colleague Clyde L. Cowan, Jr., of the subatomic particle called the neutrino, a tiny lepton with little or no mass and a neutral charge. Reines shared the Nobel Prize with physicist Martin Lewis Perl, who also discovered a fundamental particle, the tau.

Reines was educated at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. (B.S., 1939; M.A., 1941), and at New York University (Ph.D., 1944). From 1944 to 1959 he conducted research in particle physics and nuclear weaponry at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; in 1951 he oversaw experiments designed for the testing of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. After his discovery of the neutrino, Reines joined the faculty of Case Institute of Technology (later Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1959. He was a professor at the University of California at Irvine from 1966 until his retirement in 1988. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980.

The neutrino was first postulated in the 1930s by Wolfgang Pauli and later named by Enrico Fermi, but because of its minuscule size, it eluded detection for many years. In the early 1950s Reines and Cowan set out to detect the particle, first at the Hanford Engineer Works in Richland, Wash., and then at the Savannah River laboratories in South Carolina. In their experiment a nuclear reactor emitted neutrinos into a 400-litre (105-gallon) preparation of water and cadmium chloride. When a neutrino collided with a hydrogen nucleus (i.e., a proton), the interaction created a positron and a neutron. The positron was slowed by the liquid solution and destroyed by an electron, creating photons that were recorded by scintillation detectors. The neutron was likewise slowed and destroyed by a cadmium nucleus, creating photons that were recorded microseconds after the first set of photons. The separate recordings of the two impacts, therefore, gave proof of the existence of the neutrino. Reines subsequently built other neutrino detectors underground and helped pioneer the field of neutrino astronomy.

Details

Frederick Reines (March 16, 1918 – August 26, 1998) was an American physicist. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment. He may be the only scientist in history "so intimately associated with the discovery of an elementary particle and the subsequent thorough investigation of its fundamental properties."

A graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology and New York University, Reines joined the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944, working in the Theoretical Division in Richard Feynman's group. He became a group leader there in 1946. He participated in a number of nuclear tests, culminating in his becoming the director of the Operation Greenhouse test series in the Pacific in 1951.

In the early 1950s, working in Hanford and Savannah River Sites, Reines and Cowan developed the equipment and procedures with which they first detected the supposedly undetectable neutrinos in June 1956. Reines dedicated the major part of his career to the study of the neutrino's properties and interactions, which work would influence study of the neutrino for many researchers to come. This included the detection of neutrinos created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays, and the 1987 detection of neutrinos emitted from Supernova SN1987A, which inaugurated the field of neutrino astronomy.

Los Alamos Laboratory

In 1944 Richard Feynman recruited Reines to work in the Theoretical Division at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, where he would remain for the next fifteen years.[4] He joined Feynman's T-4 (Diffusion Problems) Group, which was part of Hans Bethe's T (Theoretical) Division. Diffusion was an important aspect of critical mass calculations. In June 1946, he became a group leader, heading the T-1 (Theory of Dragon) Group. An outgrowth of the "tickling the Dragon's tail" experiment, the Dragon was a machine that could attain a critical state for short bursts of time, which could be used as a research tool or power source.

Reines participated in a number of nuclear tests, and writing reports on their results. These included Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll in 1946, Operation Sandstone at Eniwetok Atoll in 1948, and Operation Ranger and Operation Buster–Jangle at the Nevada Test Site. In 1951 he was the director of Operation Greenhouse series of nuclear tests in the Pacific. This saw the first American tests of boosted fission weapons, an important step towards thermonuclear weapons. He studied the effects of nuclear blasts, and co-authored a paper with John von Neumann on Mach stem formation, an important aspect of an air blast wave.

In spite or perhaps because of his role in these nuclear tests, Reines was concerned about the dangers of radioactive pollution from atmospheric nuclear tests, and became an advocate of underground nuclear testing. In the wake of the Sputnik crisis, he participated in John Archibald Wheeler's Project 137, which evolved into JASON. He was also a delegate at the Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva in 1958.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-08-05 15:56:39

2011) Paul J. Crutzen

Gist:

Life

Paul Crutzen was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he studied to become an engineer and later worked at the city’s Bridge Construction Bureau. Together with his new Finnish wife, Terttu Soinonen, Crutzen moved to Gävle, Sweden, in 1958. After finding work as a computer programmer at the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University, he also began studying there. He also conducted his Nobel Prize-awarded research at the department. Crutzen has also worked at institutions in the US, Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria.

Work

The atmosphere around our earth contains small amounts of ozone; molecules made from three oxygen atoms. Ozone has played a major role in absorbing ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which would otherwise negatively impact life on earth. In 1970, Crutzen demonstrated that nitric oxide accelerates a chemical reaction in which ozone is transformed into regular oxygen (containing two oxygen atoms). In later work, Crutzen contributed a theory that an increased thinning of the ozone layer at the poles could be explained by the emission of industrial gases.

Summary

Paul Crutzen (born December 3, 1933, Amsterdam, Netherlands—died January 28, 2021) was a Dutch chemist who received the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for demonstrating, in 1970, that chemical compounds of nitrogen oxide accelerate the destruction of stratospheric ozone, which protects Earth from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. He shared the honour with American chemists Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland, who discovered in 1974 that manufactured chlorofluorocarbon gases also contribute to ozone depletion.

Crutzen received a doctorate in meteorology from Stockholm University in 1973. He worked at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. In 1970 he discovered that nonreactive nitrous oxide (N2O), produced naturally by soil bacteria, rises into the stratosphere, where solar energy splits it into two reactive compounds, NO and NO2. These compounds, which remain active for some time, react catalytically with ozone (O3), breaking it down into molecular oxygen (O2). His research was published that year in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Although Crutzen’s work was not widely accepted initially, it helped pave the way for the atmospheric research of Molina, Rowland, and other chemists. Crutzen was elected to academic societies in both Europe and the United States. Crutzen is also known for coining the term “anthropocene” in 2000 to describe the most recent period of history where the collective activities of human beings (Homo sapiens) began to substantially alter Earth’s surface, atmosphere, oceans, and systems of nutrient cycling.

Details

Paul Jozef Crutzen (3 December 1933 – 28 January 2021) was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist. He and Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for their work on atmospheric chemistry and specifically for his efforts in studying the formation and decomposition of atmospheric ozone. In addition to studying the ozone layer and climate change, he popularized the term Anthropocene to describe a proposed new epoch in the Quaternary period when human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth. He was also amongst the first few scientists to introduce the idea of a nuclear winter to describe the potential climatic effects stemming from large-scale atmospheric pollution including smoke from forest fires, industrial exhausts, and other sources like oil fires.

He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and an elected foreign member of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom.

Early life and education

Crutzen was born in Amsterdam, the son of Anna (Gurk) and Josef Crutzen. In September 1940, the same year Germany invaded The Netherlands, Crutzen entered his first year of elementary school. His classes moved around to different locations after the primary school was taken over by the Germans; during the last months of the war he experienced the 'winter of hunger' with several of his schoolmates dying of famine or disease. In 1946 with some special help he graduated from elementary school and moved onto Hogere Burgerschool (Higher Citizens School). There, with the help of his cosmopolitian parents he became fluent in French, English, and German. Along with languages he also focused on natural sciences in this school, graduating in 1951; however his exam results did not qualify him for university scholarships. Instead, he studied Civil Engineering at a Higher Professional Education school with lower costs, and took a job with the Bridge Construction Bureau in Amsterdam in 1954. After completing military service, in 1958 he married Terttu Soininen, a Finnish university student whom he had met a few years earlier and moved with her to Gävle, a tiny city 200 km north of Stockholm where he took a job at a construction bureau. After seeing an advertisement by the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University for a computer programmer, he applied, was selected, and in July 1959 moved with his wife and new daughter Ilona to Stockholm.

Beginning of academic career

In the 1920's Norwegian meteorologists began using fluid mechanics in analyse weather, and by 1959 the Meteorology Institute of Stockholm University was at the forefront of meteorology research using numerical modeling. The theories were validated in 1960 by images from Tiros, the first weather satellite.

At that time, Stockholm University housed the fastest computers in the world with the BESK (Binary Electronic Sequence Calculator) and its successor, the Facit EDB. Crutzen was involved with the programming and application of some of those early numerical models for weather prediction, and also developed a tropical cyclone model himself.

Working as a programmer at the university, he was able to take other lectures and in 1963 applied for a PhD program with a thesis combining mathematics, statistics and meteorology.

Although intending to extend his cyclone model for his thesis, around 1965 he was asked to help US scientists with a numerical model for the distribution of oxygen allotropes (atomic oxygen, molecular oxygen and ozone) in the stratosphere, the mesosphere and the lower thermosphere. This involved studies of stratospheric chemistry and the photochemistry of ozone. His PhD awarded in 1968, Determination of parameters appearing in the "dry" and the "wet" photochemical theories for ozone in the stratosphere, suggested that nitrogen oxides (NOx) should be studied.

His thesis was well-received and led to a post-doctoral fellowship at the Clarendon Laboratory of the University of Oxford, on behalf of the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), the precursor of ESA.

Research career

Crutzen conducted research primarily in atmospheric chemistry. He is best known for his research on ozone depletion. In 1970 he pointed out that emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a stable, long-lived gas produced by soil bacteria, from the Earth's surface could affect the amount of nitric oxide (NO) in the stratosphere. Crutzen showed that nitrous oxide lives long enough to reach the stratosphere, where it is converted into NO. Crutzen then noted that increasing use of fertilizers might have led to an increase in nitrous oxide emissions over the natural background, which would in turn result in an increase in the amount of NO in the stratosphere. Thus human activity could affect the stratospheric ozone layer. In the following year, Crutzen and (independently) Harold Johnston suggested that NO emissions from the fleet of, then proposed, supersonic transport (SST) airliners (a few hundred Boeing 2707s), which would fly in the lower stratosphere, could also deplete the ozone layer; however more recent analysis has disputed this as a large concern.

In 1974 Crutzen received a prepublication draft of a scientific paper by Frank S. Rowland, professor of Chemistry at University of California, Irvine, and Mario J. Molina, a postdoctoral fellow from Mexico. It concerned the possible destructive effects of chlorofluoromethanes on the ozone layer. Crutzen immediately developed a model of this effect, which predicted severe depletion of ozone if those chemicals continued to be used at that current rate.

Crutze has listed his main research interests as "Stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry, and their role in the biogeochemical cycles and climate". From 1980, he worked at the Department of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, in Mainz, Germany; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego; and at Seoul National University, South Korea. He was also a long-time adjunct professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and research professor at the department of meteorology at Stockholm University, Sweden. From 1997 to 2002 he was professor of aeronomy at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Utrecht University.

He co-signed a letter from over 70 Nobel laureate scientists to the Louisiana Legislature supporting the repeal of that U.S. state's creationism law, the Louisiana Science Education Act. In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.

As of 2021, Crutzen had an h-index of 151 according to Google Scholar and of 110 according to Scopus. On his death, the president of the Max Planck Society, Martin Stratmann, said that Crutzen's work led to the ban on ozone-depleting chemicals, which was an unprecedented example of Nobel Prize basic research directly leading to a global political decision.

Jai Ganesh · 2024-08-06 15:56:07

2012) Mario Molina

Gist:

Life

Mario Molina was born in Mexico City and wanted to be a chemist from childhood. He attended a boarding school in Switzerland from age 11, since it was considered important for a chemist to understand German. He later studied to become a chemical engineer in Mexico before continuing his work in Europe and in Berkeley, California in the United States. His time at Berkeley was stimulating, and it was there he discovered how freons damage the ozone layer. Molina later worked in San Diego, California in the United States and in Mexico. He was married to Guadalupe Alvarez and has a son, Felipe, with former wife Luisa Molina.

Work

The atmosphere around our earth contains small amounts of ozone; molecules made from three oxygen atoms. Ozone has played a major role in absorbing ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which would otherwise negatively impact life on earth. In 1974, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland demonstrated that CFC gases, freons, have a damaging effect on ozone in the atmosphere. Freons had many uses, including propellants in spray cans and refrigerants in refrigerators. By limiting the use of freons, the depletion of the ozone layer has been slowed.

Summary

Mario Molina (born March 19, 1943, Mexico City, Mexico—died October 7, 2020, Mexico City) was a Mexican-born American chemist who was jointly awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with chemists F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen, for research in the 1970s concerning the decomposition of the ozonosphere, which shields Earth from dangerous solar radiation. The discoveries of Molina and Rowland—that some industrially manufactured gases deplete the ozone layer—led to an international movement in the late 20th century to limit the widespread use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases.

Molina studied chemical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (B.S., 1965) in Mexico City and received an advanced degree from the University of Freiburg (1967) in West Germany before returning to his alma mater to become an associate professor (1967–68). He resumed his education in the United States at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1972), where he worked for a year before joining Rowland at the University of California, Irvine. The pair conducted experiments on pollutants in the atmosphere, discovering that CFC gases rise into the stratosphere, where ultraviolet radiation breaks them into their component elements of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon. There, each chlorine atom is capable of destroying about 100,000 ozone molecules before becoming inactive.

Molina was the principal author of the paper describing their theories, which was published in the scientific journal Nature in 1974. Their findings sparked a nationwide debate on the environmental effects of CFC gases and were validated in the mid-1980s when a region of stratospheric ozone depletion, known as the ozone hole, was discovered over Antarctica. Molina worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena from 1982 to 1989, when he became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In 2004 he moved to the University of California, San Diego. Molina was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Details

Mario José Molina-Pasquel Henríquez (19 March 1943 – 7 October 2020) was a Mexican physical chemist. He played a pivotal role in the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, and was a co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in discovering the threat to the Earth's ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. He was the first Mexican-born scientist to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the third Mexican-born person to receive a Nobel prize.

In his career, Molina held research and teaching positions at University of California, Irvine, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Molina was also Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment in Mexico City. Molina was a climate policy advisor to the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Early life

Molina was born in Mexico City to Roberto Molina Pasquel and Leonor Henríquez. His father was a lawyer and diplomat who served as an ambassador to Ethiopia, Australia and the Philippines. His mother was a family manager. With considerably different interests than his parents, Mario Molina went on to make one of the biggest discoveries in environmental science.

Mario Molina attended both elementary and primary school in Mexico. However, before even attending high school, Mario Molina had developed a deep interest in chemistry. As a child he converted a bathroom in his home into his own little laboratory, using toy microscopes and chemistry sets. Ester Molina, Mario's aunt, and an already established chemist, nurtured his interests and aided him in completing more complex chemistry experiments. At this time, Mario knew he wanted to pursue a career in chemistry, and at the age of 11, he was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland at Institut auf dem Rosenberg, where he learnt to speak German. Before this, Mario had initially wanted to become a professional violinist, but his love for chemistry triumphed over that interest. At first Mario was disappointed when he arrived at the boarding school in Switzerland due to the fact that most of his classmates did not have the same interest in science as he did.

Molina's early career consisted of research at various academic institutions. Molina went on to earn his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1965. Following this, Molina studied polymerization kinetics at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, West Germany, for two years. Finally, he was accepted for graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning his doctorate he made his way to UC Irvine. He then returned to Mexico where he kickstarted the first chemical engineering program at his alma mater. This was only the beginning of his chemistry endeavors.

Career

Mario Molina began his studies at the University of California at Berkeley in 1968, where he would obtain his PhD in physical chemistry. Throughout his years at Berkeley, he participated in various research projects such as the study of molecular dynamics using chemical lasers and investigation of the distribution of internal energy in the products of chemical and photochemical reactions. Throughout this journey is where he worked with his professor and mentor George C. Pimentel who grew his love for chemistry even further. After completing his PhD in physical chemistry, in 1973, he enrolled in a research program at UC Berkeley, with Sherwood Rowland. The topic of interest was Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) . The two would later on make one of the largest discoveries in atmospheric chemistry. They developed their theory of ozone depletion, which later influenced the mass public to reduce their use of CFCs. This kickstarted his career as a widely known chemist.

Between 1974 and 2004, Molina variously held research and teaching posts at University of California, Irvine, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he held a joint appointment in the Department of Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Department of Chemistry. On 1 July 2004, Molina joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of California, San Diego, and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In addition he established a non-profit organization, which opened the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies in Energy and the Environment (Spanish: Centro Mario Molina para Estudios Estratégicos sobre Energía y Medio Ambiente) in Mexico City in 2005. Molina served as its director.

Molina served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 2000 to 2005. He also served on the board of directors of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2004–2014), and as a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Institutional Policy Committee and its Committee on Global Security and Sustainability.

Molina was nominated to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences as of 24 July 2000. He served as a co-chair of the Vatican workshop and co-author of the report Well Under 2 Degrees Celsius: Fast Action Policies to Protect People and the Planet from Extreme Climate Change (2017) with Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Durwood Zaelke. The report proposed 12 scalable and practical solutions which are part of a three-lever cooling strategy to mitigate climate change.

Molina was named by US president Barack Obama to form a transition team on environmental issues in 2008. Under President Obama, he was a member of the United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Molina sat on the board of directors for Xyleco.

He contributed to the content of the papal encyclical Laudato Si'.

In 2020, Mario Molina contributed to research regarding the importance of wearing face masks amid the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. The research article titled "Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19" was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal in collaboration with Renyi Zhang, Yixin Li, Annie L. Zhang and Yuan Wang.

Work on CFCs

Molina joined the lab of Professor F. Sherwood Rowland in 1973 as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, Molina continued Rowland's pioneering research into "hot atom" chemistry, which is the study of chemical properties of atoms with excess translational energy owing to radioactive processes.

This study soon led to research into chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), apparently harmless gases that were used in refrigerants, aerosol sprays, and the the making of plastic foams. CFCs were being released by human activity and were known to be accumulating in the atmosphere. The basic scientific question Molina asked was "What is the consequence of society releasing something to the environment that wasn't there before?"

Rowland and Molina had investigated compounds similar to CFCs before. Together they developed the CFC ozone depletion theory, by combining basic scientific knowledge about the chemistry of ozone, CFCs and atmospheric conditions with computer modelling.

Math Is Fun Forum

#1526 2024-07-13 19:05:45

Re: crème de la crème

#1527 2024-07-14 16:41:48

Re: crème de la crème

#1528 2024-07-15 18:00:08

Re: crème de la crème

#1529 2024-07-16 16:42:01

Re: crème de la crème

#1530 2024-07-17 16:33:11

Re: crème de la crème

#1531 2024-07-18 16:15:31

Re: crème de la crème

#1532 2024-07-19 16:59:05

Re: crème de la crème

#1533 2024-07-20 16:42:38

Re: crème de la crème

#1534 2024-07-21 17:07:09

Re: crème de la crème

#1535 2024-07-22 16:13:35

Re: crème de la crème

#1536 2024-07-23 16:14:46

Re: crème de la crème

#1537 2024-07-24 16:29:55

Re: crème de la crème

#1538 2024-07-25 16:53:08

Re: crème de la crème

#1539 2024-07-26 15:46:14

Re: crème de la crème

#1540 2024-07-27 15:23:18

Re: crème de la crème

#1541 2024-07-28 15:47:33

Re: crème de la crème

#1542 2024-07-29 15:27:57

Re: crème de la crème

#1543 2024-07-30 15:18:22

Re: crème de la crème

#1544 2024-07-31 16:09:14

Re: crème de la crème

#1545 2024-08-01 15:20:42

Re: crème de la crème

#1546 2024-08-02 15:55:27

Re: crème de la crème

#1547 2024-08-03 15:59:00

Re: crème de la crème

#1548 2024-08-04 15:58:05

Re: crème de la crème

#1549 2024-08-05 15:56:39

Re: crème de la crème

#1550 2024-08-06 15:56:07

Re: crème de la crème

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