Sidney Altman
| Sidney Altman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
7 May 1939 Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian & American (since 1984) |
| Fields | Molecular biology |
| Alma mater | MIT, University of Colorado at Boulder |
| Known for | Ribozymes |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1989) |
| Spouse | Ann Korner (m. 1972; 2 children) |
Sidney Altman (born May 7, 1939) is a Canadian and Americanmolecular biologist, who is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. In 1989 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R. Cech for their work on the catalytic properties of RNA.
Altman was born on May 7, 1939, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His parents, Ray (Arlin), a textile worker, and Victor Altman, a grocer, were immigrants to Canada, each coming from Eastern Europe as a young adult, in the 1920s. Altman's mother was from Białystok in Poland, and had come to Canada with her sister at the age of eighteen, learning English and working in a textile factory to earn money to bring the rest of their family to Quebec. Altman's father, born in Ukraine, had been a worker on a collective farm in the Soviet Union. He was sponsored to come to Canada as a farm worker, but later, as a husband and a father of two sons, he supported the family by running a small grocery store in Montreal. Sidney Altman was later to look back on his parents' lives as an illustration of the value of the work ethic: "It was from them I learned that hard work in stable surroundings could yield rewards, even if only in infinitesimally small increments."
As Altman reached adulthood, the family's financial situation had become secure enough that he was able to pursue a college education. He went to the United States to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, he was a member of the ice hockey team. After achieving his bachelor's degree from MIT in 1960, Altman spent 18 months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. Due to personal concerns and the lack of opportunity for beginning graduate students to participate in laboratory work, he left the program without completing the degree. Some months later, he enrolled as a graduate student in biophysics at the University of Colorado Medical Center. His project was a study of the effects of acridines on the replication of bacteriophage T4 DNA. He received his Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Colorado in 1967 with thesis advisor Leonard Lerman; Lerman went in 1967 to Vanderbilt University, where Altman worked briefly as a researcher in molecular biology before leaving for Harvard.
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