Oliver Smithies

Oliver Smithies
Smithies official Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America portrait (2009)
Born	(1925-06-23)23 June 1925 Halifax, West Yorkshire, England
Died	10 January 2017(2017-01-10) (aged 91) Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US
Nationality	United Kingdom, United States
Fields	Biochemistry Genetics
Institutions	University of Toronto University of Wisconsin–Madison University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Alma mater	University of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
Thesis	Physico-chemical properties of solutions of proteins (1951)
Doctoral advisor	Alexander G. Ogston
Known for	Gel electrophoresis Gene targeting
Notable awards	ForMemRS (1998) Lasker Award (2001) Wolf Prize in Medicine (2002) Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal (2007) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2007)

Oliver Smithies (23 June 1925 – 10 January 2017) was a British-born American geneticist and physical biochemist. He is known for introducing starch as a medium for gel electrophoresis in 1955, and for the discovery, simultaneously with Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans, of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA, a much more reliable method of altering animal genomes than previously used, and the technique behind gene targeting and knockout mice. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007 for his genetics work.

Smithies was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, to William Smithies and his wife Doris, née Sykes. His father sold life insurance policies and his mother taught English at Halifax Technical College. He had a twin brother and a younger sister. He attended a primary school in the nearby village of Copley and then went to Heath Grammar School in Halifax. He said that his love of science came from an early fascination with radios and telescopes.

He attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford on a Brackenbury Scholarship, initially reading medicine. He studied anatomy and physiology, winning a prize in anatomy, and graduated with a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in animal physiology, including biochemistry, in 1946. Inspired by tutorials from Alexander G. Ogston on applying physical chemistry to biological systems, Smithies then switched away from medicine to earn a second bachelor's degree in chemistry. He published his first research paper, co-written with Ogston, in 1948. In 1951, he received a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Philosophy in biochemistry under Ogston's supervision; his thesis was entitled "Physico-chemical properties of solutions of proteins".