| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Peter C. Agre | | | Institution: | Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | | |
Peter Agre is a physician-scientist who has spent the last two decades studying the proteins of red blood cells, including those of the red cell membrane that determine blood type. Along with other workers in Paris and England, he solved the old puzzle of whether the Rh blood type is determined by one gene or by two or more closely linked genes. He isolated a novel protein of the red cell membrane that proved to be the specific protein for a channel involved in transfer of water across the cell membrane. He found that this channel, which he called aquaporin-1, is present in many other types of cells, such as the kidney and lung, where he could show physiologic significance. Furthermore, he showed that the previously known Colton blood type was determined by variation in the aquaporin-1 protein. He found that aquaporin-1 is the archetypic member of a family of cell membrane proteins. In 2003 Dr. Agre was awarded the Nobel Prize for these discoveries. He has been Professor of Biological Chemistry and Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine since 1993. In February 2009 he became president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Barry R. Bloom | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 209. Neurobiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1937 | | | | | | |
Barry Bloom's passion has been to relate the cutting edge of biomedical science to the needs of the 85% of the world's people living in resource-poor developing countries. His initial research analyzed the complex mechanisms of the immune response by developing in vitro models, enabling him to discover the first lymphokine or cytokine, non-antibody products of activated lymphocytes that regulate the functions of the immune system and mediate inflammation, tissue damage and resistance to microbial infection. After teaching the first course on immunology in India, he began research on leprosy. With collaborators, he created the first DNA library containing all the genes of the leprosy and the tubercle bacilli, thereby ultimately enabling the complete genomes of these major pathogens of humans to be sequenced. Those libraries and the first monoclonal antibodies produced against these pathogens were given to the World Health Organization (WHO) to distribute free of charge to scientists all over the world, helping to stimulate a global effort against these diseases. He has more recently explored the genetic basis of resistance of experimental animals against tuberculosis which integrates knowledge of the host and pathogen in understanding the disease. When there was a serious increase in tuberculosis in the U.S. in the early 1990s his group established, against conventional wisdom, that active transmission of infection, rather than reactivation of old infections, was an important component of the epidemic. Such transmission required implementation of stringent public health measures. He has worked in an official capacity for the WHO for the past 37 years and has advised the National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Sciences and the White House on scientific issues and on international health policies. Dr. Bloom is currently Dean of the Faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Carl G. Groth | | | Institution: | Karolinska Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1933 | | | Death Date: | February 16, 2014 | | | | | | |
Carl G. Groth, MD, Phd, Professor Emeritus of Transplantation Surgery, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, graduated from the Karolinska Institute, where he obtained his MD and PhD. Between 1966 and 1972 Groth was assigned to the Department of Surgery at the University of Colorado Medical School, first as an NIH international Post doctoral Fellow and later, as an Associate Professor of Surgery. At this department the first successful human liver transplantation in the world was carried out in 1967 by Dr. Thomas Strazl. Groth was a key member of Strazl's surgical team.
Groth served as the Chairman of the Department of Transplantation Surgery at Huddinge Hospital in Stockholm from 1976 to 1995. He was appointed Professor of Transplantation Surgery at the Karolinska Institute in 1984, from which position he retired in 2000. His life time work focused on clinical kidney, liver and pancreas transplantations. He performed pioneer work in pancreatic transplantation as a means to treat patients with type 1 diabetes, particularly with regard to surgical techniques and the effects of the transplantation in the secondary complications of the disease. He has also led a number of highly important studies in transplant patients, examining the new immunosuppressive agents that became available in the 1990's. He performed some unique studies in xenotranspantation, including a pilot trial which fetal pig islets were transplanted to diabetic patients.
Groth served as a principal investigator on numerous research projects including two major consortium grants (from Novartis Pharma and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) on pig islet transplantation as a means to treat diabetes.
He edited the fist monograph on pancreatic transplantation in 1988. His work includes approximately 700 scientific articles and some 25 book chapters.
Groth served as President of the Transplantation Society in 2001-2002. He was the founding President of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association and the International Xenotransplantation Association. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the American Surgical Association, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the Swedish Society for Gastroenterology. In 1998 he was awarded the King's Medal for outstanding achievement in transplantation. He has also received the Medawar Prize, the foremost International Award in transplantation (2006) and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons Pioneer Award (2008). In 2005 he became a member of the World Health Organization's expert advisory panel on cell, tissue and organ transplantation. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society om 2004.
Carl G. Groth died February 16, 2014, at the age of 80, in Stockholm, Sweden. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Peter H. von Hippel | | | Institution: | Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Oregon | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 206. Physiology, Biophysics, and Pharmacology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1931 | | | | | | |
Peter von Hippel was born in Germany and became a naturalized US citizen in 1942. He obtained his BS, MS, and Ph. D. degrees at MIT, working on the physical biochemistry of protein complexes in the laboratory of Professor David F. Waugh. He then did postdoctoral work on actomyosin complexes with Dr. Manuel F. Morales at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, followed by a period as a staff scientist at NMRI while serving in the U.S. Navy He began his academic career in 1959 as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire. His work at that time involved analyzes of the structure of proteins and nucleic acids, and the effects on these macromolecules of ions and other solvent additives. He remained at Dartmouth until 1967, and then moved to the University of Oregon as a Professor of Chemistry and Member of the Institute of Molecular Biology, where he has been ever since. While at Oregon the research program in the von Hippel laboratory has progressed from studies of the interactions of simple regulatory proteins and protein models with DNA to the quantitative analysis of the structure and function of various macromolecular complexes involved in the control of DNA replication and RNA transcription. He has served as Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Chair of the Chemistry Department at Oregon, and in 1989 was appointed an American Cancer Society Research Professor of Chemistry, which has spared him from further formal administrative activities. In other venues Dr. von Hippel has served on various study sections and advisory committees for both NIH and NSF and has participated in the activities of various professional organizations, including serving on the Board of Directors of FASEB and as President of the Biophysical Society. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous professional journals, and he and his laboratory colleagues have published more than 240 research papers. Dr. von Hippel was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1978, to fellowship of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1979, and to resident membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2004. He is the 2021 recipient of the Ignacio Tinoco Award from the Biophysical Society for his exceptional contributions to the field of biophysics. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. H. Robert Horvitz | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; McGovern Institute for Brain Research | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
H. Robert Horvitz's Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, awarded for his pioneering genetic dissection of programmed cell death (apoptosis), including the crucial discovery of the first caspase that mediates apoptosis, celebrated just one of his several comparably important contributions. Through genetic analysis of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, Dr. Horvitz discovered and dissected many genes and pathways that play highly specific roles during animal development, and in animal behavior as well. He defined genes that control specific aspects of cell lineage and cell fate, including the generation of cell diversity during development; the timing of particular developmental events; inter- and intracellular signaling; and programmed cell death. Dr. Horvitz's molecular analyses of these genes revealed most of them to be strikingly similar to genes found in other organisms, including humans, and in many cases similar to genes that cause human disease. A member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty since 1978, Dr. Horvitz has been David H. Koch Professor of Cancer Biology since 2001. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1974) and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1991); the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1994); and the Genetics Society of America (president, 1995). | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Donald F. Steiner | | | Institution: | University of Chicago; Howard Hughes Medical Institute | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1930 | | | Death Date: | November 11, 2014 | | | | | | |
Donald F. Steiner was born in Lima, Ohio in 1930. He received his M.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1956 and had a distinguished career at the university as professor of biochemistry (1968-70); A. N. Pritzker Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine (1970-84); chairman of the department of biochemistry (1973-79); director of the Diabetes-Endocrinology Center (1974-78); associate director of the Diabetes and Research Training Center (1977-81); and A. N. Pritzker Distinguished Service Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Medicine (1984-2014). He has also been a senior investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1985-2006) and director or co-director of the University of Chicago Diabetes and Research Training Center. In 1967 Dr. Steiner discovered proinsulin, the single-chain precursor of insulin. He purified it and studied its structure, properties, biosynthesis, and cell biology, demonstrating its intracellular conversion into insulin and the cosecreted C-peptide. With Dr. A. H. Rubenstein, radioimmunoassays were developed for proinsulin and C-peptide in serum, which have been widely applied in diabetes research. Dr. Steiner's pioneering studies thus opened the now very broad field of precursor protein processing, leading to the identification of many other proproteins and more recently to the discovery of the mammalian proprotein convertase family of cellular processing endoproteases. His laboratory also first demonstrated receptor-mediated uptake and degradation of insulin. His discoveries have strongly influenced insulin and islet cell research, ranging from the commercial production of human insulin for diabetes therapy to the evolution of insulin and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs). The recipient of honors including the Gairdner Award (1971), Wolf Foundation Prize in Medicine (1985) and the Endocrine Society's Fred C. Koch Award (1990), Dr. Steiner was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He was elected a member ofthe American Philosophical Society in 2004. Donald Steiner died November 11, 2014, at age 84 at his home in Chicago, Illinois. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Carl R. Woese | | | Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 205. Microbiology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | Death Date: | December 30, 2012 | | | | | | |
By combining the methods of evolutionary biology and microbiology, Carl Woese used ribosomal RNA sequence data as an evolutionary measure to develop a phylogenetically based classification system, initially for prokaryotic bacteria and ultimately for all living organisms. In doing so he effectively discovered a new domain of life, the Archaea, comprised of unique microbes including methanogens and thermophiles; he also published the first complete genome structure of this newly recognized life form. This work is of profound significance in understanding the origins of life on earth and the process of adaptation to extreme environments. In overturning the long-held traditional dichotomization of life into eukaryotes and prokaryotes, he revolutionized biology, profoundly and fundamentally changed the world's view of living organisms. Dr. Woese was Stanley O. Ikenberry Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois, where he had taught since 1964. A graduate of Yale University (Ph.D., 1953), he had been honored with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Award (1984); the Leeuwenhoek Medal (1990); the National Academy of Sciences' Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology (1997); the National Medal of Science (2000); the Crafoord Award of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2003); the 2009 Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Microbiology; and membership in the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Carl Woese died December 30, 2012, at the age of 84 in Urbana, Illinois. | |
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