Sherman Weissman
{{Short description|American geneticist}}
{{Infobox scientist
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| name = Sherman Weissman
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| fields = Genetics
| workplaces = Yale School of Medicine
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| alma_mater = Harvard Medical School
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| known_for = Sequencing the SV40 genome
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Sherman Morton Weissman is an American scientist and the Sterling Professor of Genetics at the Yale School of Medicine. A mentor to Francis Collins, Weissman elucidated the nucleic acid sequence of the SV40 genome.
Biography
Weissman was the son of a general practitioner. After attending Harvard Medical School, Weissman interned at Boston City Hospital and was a research fellow with the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute before taking a faculty position at Yale.[http://bbs.yale.edu/people/sherman_weissman-1.profile Sherman Morton Weissman, MD]. Yale School of Medicine. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
Weissman mentored Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, during Collins's postdoctoral fellowship at Yale.{{cite news|last1=Gosselin|first1=Peter|title=Public project's chief: Quiet but no pushover|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jun-27-mn-45271-story.html|access-date=January 1, 2016|work=Los Angeles Times|date=June 27, 2000}} Collins called Weissman "the smartest guy" he has met{{cite book|last1=Davies|first1=Kevin|title=Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA|date=2002|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore, Md.|isbn=0801871409|page=70|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EnqT-HvWdKMC&pg=PA70|access-date=January 1, 2016}} and credited Weissman with allowing him to establish autonomy as a researcher. In Weissman's lab, Collins developed the technique known as chromosome jumping.{{cite journal|last1=Collins|first1=Francis|title=Scientists need a shorter path to research freedom|journal=Nature|date=October 7, 2010|volume=467|issue=7316|pages=635|doi=10.1038/467635a|pmid=20930798|doi-access=free}}
In 1978, Weissman published the complete nucleic acid sequence of the SV40 genome. A week later, Belgian researcher Walter Fiers published the genome sequence in another journal. Until {{fract|1|1|2}} years earlier, the Weissman and Fiers teams had each been working on separate halves of the sequence. As technology allowed for faster sequencing, each team began to work toward sequencing the entire genome on its own. In the months before he came up with the published sequence, Weissman had to retract several "final" sequences once errors were discovered.{{cite news|title=Science loses in researchers' race|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dw7Vu20g1cEC&pg=PA347|work=New Scientist|date=May 11, 1978|page=347}} Weissman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983.{{cite web|title=Sherman M. Weissman|url=http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/49271.html|publisher=National Academy of Sciences|access-date=January 1, 2016}}
Weissman's seven children include Jonathan Weissman, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jonathan's mother is Myrna Weissman, a professor of epidemiology in psychiatry at Columbia University.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/04/style/josina-reddy-jonathan-weissman.html|title=Josina Reddy, Jonathan Weissman|work=The New York Times |date=4 May 1997 |access-date=2018-11-25|language=en}}
References
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Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:Northwestern University alumni
Category:Harvard Medical School alumni
Category:Yale School of Medicine faculty
Category:Yale Sterling Professors
Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences