Walter Gilbert

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Walter Gilbert

| image = Walter Gilbert HD2008 portrait.JPG

| honorific_suffix = ForMemRS

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1932|03|21}}

| caption = Walter Gilbert in 2008

| birth_place = Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

| field = {{Plainlist|

Biochemistry
Physics}}

| work_institutions = Harvard University

| education = {{Plainlist|

Harvard University (BA, MA)
University of Cambridge (PhD)}}

| thesis_title = On generalised dispersion relations and meson-nucleon scattering

| thesis_year = 1958

| thesis_url = http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.599407

| doctoral_advisor = Abdus Salam

| doctoral_students = {{Plainlist|

Benno Müller-Hill
Didier Stainier
George M. Church{{Cite journal | last1 = Church | first1 = G. | last2 = Gilbert | first2 = W. | title = Genomic sequencing | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 81 | issue = 7 | pages = 1991–1995 | year = 1984 | pmid = 6326095 | pmc = 345422 | doi=10.1073/pnas.81.7.1991|bibcode = 1984PNAS...81.1991C | doi-access = free }}
Gerald Guralnik
Helen Donis-Keller
Jack Greenblatt{{cite web |url=https://academictree.org/pombe/peopleinfo.php?pid=27347 |title=Jack Greenblatt |website=academictree.org}}

}}

| known_for = DNA sequencing

| prizes = {{Plainlist|

NAS Award in Molecular Biology {{small|(1968)}}
Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (1979)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry {{small|(1980)}}}}

| spouse = {{marriage|Celia Stone|1953}}

| children = 2

| website = {{URL|http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1980/gilbert-bio.html}}

}}

Walter Gilbert (born March 21, 1932) is an American biochemist, physicist, molecular biology pioneer, and Nobel laureate.{{Nobelprize|accessdate=2020-10-11}}{{Scopus|id=16143132500}}

Education and early life

Walter Gilbert was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1932, into a Jewish family,{{Cite web |last=JINFO |title=Jewish Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry |url=https://www.jinfo.org/Nobels_Chemistry.html |access-date=2023-03-30 |website=www.jinfo.org}} the son of Emma (Cohen), a child psychologist, and Richard V. Gilbert, an economist.{{cite journal |author=Shampo MA, Kyle RA |title=Walter Gilbert--1980 Nobel Prize for Chemistry |journal=Mayo Clin. Proc. |volume=78 |issue=5 |pages=588 |date=May 2003 |pmid=12744546 |doi= 10.4065/78.5.588|url=http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=12744546|doi-access=free }}{{Cite web | url=http://www.chilit.org/Published%20Papers/92.%20Schwartzberg%20--%20Advocate.PDF |title = Home - the Chicago Literary Club}}

When Gilbert was seven years old, the family moved to the Washington D.C. area so his father could work under Harry Hopkins on the New Deal brain trust. While living in Washington the family became friends with the family of I.F. Stone and Wally met Stone's oldest daughter, Celia, when they were both 8. They later married at age 21.{{cite news |last=Saltzman |first=Jonathan |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/03/30/five-things-you-should-know-about-wally-gilbert/HGGQQZzV8lgOeB1Ahbn5yI/story.html |title=Five things you should know about Wally Gilbert |work=The Boston Globe |date=2018-03-31 |access-date=2018-04-01 }}

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 PhD in physics supervised by the Nobel laureate Abdus Salam in 1957.{{cite thesis|degree=PhD|publisher=University of Cambridge|title=On generalised dispersion relations and meson-nucleon scattering|first= Walter|last=Gilbert|date=1958|url=http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.599407|oclc=879396761}}

Career and research

Gilbert returned to Harvard in 1956 and was appointed assistant professor of physics in 1959. Gilbert's wife Celia worked for James Watson, leading Gilbert to become interested in molecular biology. Watson and Gilbert ran their laboratory jointly through most of the 1960s, until Watson left for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.{{ cite book | title = Genes, Girls and Gamow | last = Watson | first = James D. | year = 2003 }} In 1964 he was promoted to associate professor of biophysics and promoted again in 1968 to professor of biochemistry.

Gilbert is a co-founder of the biotech start-up companies Biogen, with Kenneth Murray, Phillip Sharp and Charles Weissman{{Cite web|last=Stendahl|first=Max|date=May 31, 2018|title=40 years later, Biogen's founders Get the Band Back Together|url=https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2018/05/31/40-years-later-biogen-s-founders-get-the-band-back.html|website=Boston Business Journal}} and Myriad Genetics with Dr. Mark Skolnick and Kevin Kimberlin{{Cite book|last1=Davies|first1=Kevin|title=Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene|last2=White|first2=Michael|publisher=Wiley|year=1996|pages=199}}{{Cite web|date=April 25, 2018|title=MYRIAD: PIONEERING PREDICTIVE MEDICINE|url=https://pivotcenter.utah.edu/success-stories/myriad-pioneering-predictive-medicine/|website=University of Utah}} where he 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.{{ cite journal | title = The Genome Project | journal = The New York Times Magazine | date = December 13, 1987 | last = Kanigel | first = Robert| pages = 44, 98–101, 106 | pmid = 11658922 }} He is 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.

In 1996, Gilbert and Stuart B. Levy founded Paratek Pharmaceuticals. Gilbert served as chairman until 2014.{{Cite web | url=https://paratekpharma.com/about/founders/#dr-gilbert |title = Founders}}

Gilbert was an early proponent of sequencing the human genome. At a March 1986 meeting in Santa Fe New Mexico he proclaimed "The total human sequence is the grail of human genetics". In 1987, he proposed starting a company called Genome Corporation to sequence the genome and sell access to the information. In an opinion piece in Nature in 1991, he envisioned completion of the human genome sequence transforming biology into a field in which computer databases would be as essential as laboratory reagents{{cite journal | title = Towards a paradigm shift in biology | last=Gilbert | first=Walter | journal=Nature | year=1991 |volume=349 | number=6305 | page=99 |bibcode = 1991Natur.349...99G |doi = 10.1038/349099a0 | pmid=1986314 | s2cid=1173431 | doi-access=free }}

Gilbert returned to Harvard in 1985.{{ cite news | last= Johnson | first = Carolyn Y. | title = A physicist, biologist, Nobel laureate, CEO, and now, artist | journal = The Boston Globe | date = March 13, 2015 | url = https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/12/wally-gilbert-physicist-biologist-nobel-laureate-ceo-and-now-artist/b3OsCNVvHZOYCi48Dz4z6H/story.html}} Gilbert was an outspoken critic of David Baltimore in the handling of the scientific fraud accusations against Thereza Imanishi-Kari.{{ cite journal | title = Inquiry lacking due process | journal = The New York Times Books | last = Kolata | first = Gina | date = June 25, 1996 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/specials/baltimore-process.html }} Gilbert also joined the early controversy over the cause of AIDS.{{ cite journal | journal = Science | title= The Duesberg Phenomenon | last = Cohen | first = Jon | volume = 266 | issue= 5191 | pages = 1643–1644 | date = December 9, 1984 |pmid=7992043| url = http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/data/cohen/266-5191-1642a.pdf | doi=10.1126/science.7992043|bibcode = 1994Sci...266.1642C }}

In 1962, Gilbert's physics PhD student Gerald Guralnik extended Gilbert's work on massless particles; Guralnik's work is widely recognized as an important thread in the discovery of the Higgs Boson.{{ cite book | title = The Infinity Puzzle: The Personalities, Politics and Extraordinary Science Behind the Higgs Boson | author = Close, Frank | pages = 146–147 | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2013}}

With his PhD student Benno Müller-Hill, Gilbert was the first to purify the lac repressor,{{cite journal | pmid = 16591435 | title = Isolation of the lac repressor | last1=Gilbert | first1 = Walter | last2 = Müller-Hill | first2 = Benno | date = December 1966 | volume = 56 | issue = 6 | pages = 1891–1898|journal=PNAS | doi=10.1073/pnas.56.6.1891 | pmc=220206|bibcode = 1966PNAS...56.1891G | doi-access = free }} just beating out Mark Ptashne for purifying the first gene regulatory protein.{{cite journal | pmid = 16591470 | journal=PNAS|title = Isolation of the lambda phage repressor | last=Ptashne | first = Mark | date = February 1967 | volume = 57 | issue = 2 | pages = 306–313 | doi=10.1073/pnas.57.2.306 | pmc=335506|bibcode = 1967PNAS...57..306P | doi-access=free}}

Together with Allan Maxam, Gilbert developed a new DNA sequencing method, Maxam–Gilbert sequencing,{{cite book | last1=Maxam | first1=Allan | last2=Gilbert | first2=Walter | title=Nucleic Acids Part I | chapter=Sequencing end-labeled DNA with base-specific chemical cleavages | series=Methods in Enzymology | year=1980 |pmid=6246368|volume=65|issue=1|pages=499–560 | doi=10.1016/S0076-6879(80)65059-9| isbn=9780121819651 }} using chemical methods developed by Andrei Mirzabekov. His approach to the first synthesis of insulin via recombinant DNA{{cite journal |vauthors=Villa-Komaroff L, Efstratiadis A, Broome S, Lomedico P, Tizard R, Naber SP, Chick WL, Gilbert W |title=A bacterial clone synthesizing proinsulin | journal=PNAS | year=1978 | volume=75 |issue=8 | pages=3727–31 | doi=10.1073/pnas.75.8.3727 | pmid=358198|pmc=392859 |bibcode=1978PNAS...75.3727V |doi-access=free }} lost out to Genentech's approach which used genes built up from the nucleotides rather than from natural sources. Gilbert's effort was hampered by a temporary moratorium on recombinant DNA work in Cambridge, Massachusetts, forcing his group to move their work to an English biological weapons site.{{ cite book | title = Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene | last = Hall | first = Stephen S. | year = 1987 | publisher = Atlantic Monthly Press }}

Gilbert first proposed the terms introns (intragenic regions) and exons (expressed regions) in reference to recently discovered phenomenon of splicing{{cite journal | vauthors = Berget SM, Moore C, Sharp PA | title = Spliced segments at the 5' terminus of adenovirus 2 late mRNA | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 74 | issue = 8 | pages = 3171–3175 | date = August 1977 | pmid = 269380 | pmc = 431482 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.74.8.3171 | bibcode = 1977PNAS...74.3171B | doi-access = free }} and suggested explanation for the evolution of introns in a seminal 1978 "News and Views" correspondence to Nature titled "why genes in pieces?".{{ cite journal | last=Gilbert | first = Walter | title = Why genes in pieces | date =February 9, 1978 | volume = 271 | issue=5645 | page=501 | journal = Nature|bibcode = 1978Natur.271..501G |doi = 10.1038/271501a0 | pmid=622185| s2cid = 4216649 | doi-access = free }} In 1986, Gilbert proposed the RNA world hypothesis for the origin of life,{{Cite journal | last1 = Gilbert | first1 = W. | title = Origin of life: The RNA world | doi = 10.1038/319618a0 | journal = Nature | volume = 319 | issue = 6055 | pages = 618 | year = 1986 | bibcode=1986Natur.319..618G| s2cid = 8026658 | doi-access = free }} based on a concept first proposed by Carl Woese in 1967.

Awards and honors

File:WalterGilbert2.jpg

In 1969, Gilbert was awarded Harvard's Ledlie Prize. In 1972 he was named American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology. In 1979, Gilbert was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Frederick Sanger.{{cite journal|last1=Brownlee|first1=George G.|author-link1=George Brownlee|title=Frederick Sanger CBE CH OM. 13 August 1918 — 19 November 2013|journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society|year=2015|volume=61|publisher=Royal Society publishing|issn=0080-4606|doi=10.1098/rsbm.2015.0013|pages=437–466|doi-access=free}} That year he was also awarded the Gairdner Prize and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.

Gilbert was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Frederick Sanger and Paul Berg. Gilbert and Sanger were recognized for their pioneering work in devising methods for determining the sequence of nucleotides in a nucleic acid.

Gilbert has also been honored by the National Academy of Sciences (US Steel Foundation Award, 1968); Massachusetts General Hospital (Warren Triennial Prize, 1977);{{Cite web|title=Warren Triennial Prize|url=https://ecor.mgh.harvard.edu/MeetingsEvents/warren-triennial-prize|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127162258/https://ecor.mgh.harvard.edu/MeetingsEvents/warren-triennial-prize|archive-date=November 27, 2020|access-date=2021-10-05|website=ecor.mgh.harvard.edu}} the New York Academy of Sciences; (Louis and Bert Freedman Foundation Award, 1977), the Académie des Sciences of France (Prix Charles-Leopold Mayer Award, 1977). Gilbert was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1987.{{cite web|url=https://royalsociety.org/people/walter-gilbert-11491/|title=Professor Walter Gilbert ForMemRS|publisher=Royal Society|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150922134609/https://royalsociety.org/people/walter-gilbert-11491/|archive-date=2015-09-22|location=London}}{{cite web|title=Fellowship of the Royal Society 1660-2015|url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RVVZY00MZNrK2YCTTzVrbTFH2t3RxoAZah128gQR-NM/pubhtml|publisher=Royal Society|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151015185820/https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RVVZY00MZNrK2YCTTzVrbTFH2t3RxoAZah128gQR-NM/pubhtml|archive-date=2015-10-15|url-status=dead}}

In 2002, he received the Biotechnology Heritage Award, from the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.{{cite web|title=Biotechnology Heritage Award|url=https://www.sciencehistory.org/biotechnology-heritage-award|website=Science History Institute|access-date=22 March 2018|date=2016-05-31}}{{cite news|title= Paratek Pharmaceuticals Chairman and Co-Founder Dr. Walter Gilbert Receives Heritage Award at BIO 2002|url=http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paratek-pharmaceuticals-chairman-and-co-founder-dr-walter-gilbert-receives-heritage-award-at-bio-2002-77839297.html|access-date=5 February 2014|newspaper=PR NewsWire|date=10 June 2002}}

Allan Maxam and Walter Gilbert's 1977 paper "A new method for sequencing DNA" was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society for 2017. It was presented to the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard University.{{cite web|title=Citations for Chemical Breakthrough Awards 2017 Awardees|url=http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mainzv/HIST/awards/CCB-2017_Awardees.php|website=Division of the History of Chemistry|access-date=12 March 2018}}{{Cite journal | last1 = Maxam | first1 = A. | last2 = Gilbert | first2 = W. | title = A new method for sequencing DNA | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 74 | issue = 2 | pages = 560–564 | year = 1977 | pmid = 265521 | pmc = 392330 | doi=10.1073/pnas.74.2.560 |bibcode = 1977PNAS...74..560M | doi-access = free }}

Personal life

Gilbert married Celia Stone, the daughter of I. F. Stone, in 1953 and has two children. After retiring from Harvard in 2001, Gilbert has launched an artistic career to combine art and science. His art format is centered on digital photography.{{Cite web|url=https://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2019/21A1|title=Wally Gilbert "Worlds"|website=www.nyartbeat.com|access-date=2019-12-16}}

File:Purple Swirl by Wally Gilbert.jpg