| 1 | Name: | Dr. Lubert Stryer | |
| Institution: | Stanford University School of Medicine | ||
| Year Elected: | 2006 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 206. Physiology, Biophysics, and Pharmacology | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1938 | ||
Lubert Stryer is Winzer Professor of Cell Biology Emeritus in the Department of Neurobiology of the Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his B.S. degree in 1957 from the University of Chicago and his M.D. degree in 1961 from Harvard. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and then at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England. In 1964, Dr. Stryer joined the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford. In 1969, he moved to Yale, and in 1976, returned to Stanford to head a new department. His research over more than four decades has dealt with the interplay of light and life. Dr. Stryer's laboratory discovered the primary stage of amplification in vision and elucidated the G-protein cascade that generates a neural signal in visual excitation. He has developed new fluorescence techniques for studying biomolecules and cells, as exemplified by the use of fluorescence resonance energy transfer as a spectroscopic ruler. Dr. Stryer is the author of four editions of Biochemistry, a textbook widely used throughout the world for more than twenty-five years and translated into more than ten languages. The interface between the academic and industrial worlds has also attracted Dr. Stryer's interest and involvement. He participated in the founding and development of innovative biotechnology companies - as President and Scientific Director of the Affymax Research Institute, Director of Affymetrix, Inc. and chairman of the Board of Senomyx, Inc. At Affymax and Affymetrix, he played a key role in devising novel optical techniques for generating high-density peptide and DNA arrays. He is a co-inventor of the DNA chip, which makes it possible to read vast amounts of genetic information in a massively parallel way. Dr. Stryer has also participated in national educational affairs as a trustee and advisor. He led the "Bio2010 Study" of National Research Council's Committee on Undergraduate Biology Education and was a Director of the McKnight Neurosciences Endowment and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Stryer was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984 and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences 1975. His other honors include the National Medal of Science (2006), the American Chemical Society Award in Biological Chemistry (1970), appointment as National Lecturer of the Biophysical Society (1987), Fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (1991), the American Association for the Advancement of Science Newcomb-Cleveland Prize (1991), the Alcon Award in Vision Research (1992), an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Chicago (1992), the Distinguished Inventors Award of the Intellectual Property Owners' Association (1993) and the European Inventor of the Year Award (2006), and the Molecular Bioanalytics Award of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2002). | |||