Walter Gilbert
| Walter Gilbert | |
|---|---|
Walter Gilbert in 2008
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| Born |
March 21, 1932 Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Nationality | U.S. |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Alma mater |
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| Thesis | On generalised dispersion relations and meson-nucleon scattering (1958) |
| Doctoral advisor | Abdus Salam |
| Doctoral students | |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouse | Celia Stone (m. 1953) |
| Children | 2 |
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Website www |
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Walter Gilbert (born March 21, 1932) is an American biochemist, physicist, molecular biology pioneer, and Nobel laureate.
Walter Gilbert was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1932, the son of Emma (Cohen), a child psychologist, and Richard V. Gilbert, an economist. He was educated at the Sidwell Friends School, and attended Harvard University for undergraduate and graduate studies, earning a baccalaureate in chemistry and physics in 1953 and a master's degree in physics in 1954. He studied for his doctorate at the University of Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D in Physics supervised by the Nobel laureate Abdus Salam in 1957.
Gilbert returned to Harvard in 1956 and was appointed assistant professor of physics in 1959. Gilbert's wife Celia had begun working for James Watson, and this led to Gilbert becoming interested in problems in molecular biology. Watson and Gilbert would run their laboratory jointly through most of the 1960s, until Watson left for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1964 he was promoted to associate professor of biophysics and promoted again in 1968 to professor of biochemistry.
He is a co-founder of the biotech start-up companies Biogen and Myriad Genetics, and was the first chairman on their respective boards of directors. Gilbert left his position at Harvard to run Biogen as CEO, but was later asked to resign by the company's board of directors. He is also a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. Gilbert has served as the chairman of the Harvard Society of Fellows.
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