Nicholas R. Cozzarelli
| Nicholas R. Cozzarelli | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 26, 1938 Jersey City, New Jersey |
| Died | March 19, 2006 (aged 67) |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Alma mater |
Princeton University Harvard Medical School |
| Thesis | The L-L-Glycerophosphate Regulon in Escherichia coli (1966) |
| Academic advisors | Arthur Kornberg |
| Doctoral students | Patrick O. Brown |
| Known for | Discovery of topoisomerases |
Nicholas Robert Cozzarelli (March 26, 1938, in Jersey City, New Jersey – March 19, 2006) was an American biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Editor-in-Chief of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cozzarelli attended Princeton University graduated with an A.B. in biology in 1960. He started graduate training at Harvard Medical School advised by E. C. C. Lin and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1966. He then did his postdoctoral training with Arthur Kornberg and purified the T4-phage DNA ligase.
From 1968 to 1982, Cozzarelli was a professor at the University of Chicago where he studied topoisomerases. In 1982 he joined the faculty at University of California, Berkeley. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989. In 1995, Cozzarelli was invited to become the editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He took the position because felt that the journal had great unrealized potential as a scientific publication. During his tenure, he expanded the editorial board from 26 to more than 140 and created a second track to allow scientists to submit manuscripts directly.
Cozzarelli died on March 19, 2006, from the complications of treatment from Burkitt's lymphoma.
In his book What Mad Pursuit, Francis Crick wrote:
At about this time, Bill Pohl, a pure mathematician, got into the act. He pointed out, quite correctly, that unless something very special happened, the most likely result of replicating a piece of circular DNA would be two interlocked daughter circles rather than two separate ones. From this he deduced that the DNA chains could not be intertwined, as we had suggested, but had to lie side by side.
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