VOLUME 12, NUMBER 22 • MAY 18, 2001

Honorary Degrees Recipients for Convocation 2001

At its Centennial Convocation, The Rockefeller University will award honorary degrees to six scientists who have made important contributions to their respective areas of science. Below are biographies of the recipients.

Biology Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Presented by Hermann Steller

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, whose genetic analysis of the establishment of the embryonic body plan in Drosophila revolutionized the study of animal development, will be presented with the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for her contributions to the field of biology.

She received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work with Eric Wieschaus, in which they conducted a screen for mutations disrupting the formation of the body plan of the Drosophila embryo. The two researchers were able to identify a large number of relevant mutations and sort them into a functional hierarchy, reflecting a stepwise refinement of the body plan. Their work represented the first systematic genetic dissection of the development of an organism, and it inaugurated a new era in developmental biology.

In her own subsequent work, Nüsslein-Volhard investigated the influence of maternal genes on the establishment of the embryonic body plan; the molecular cloning and analysis of several key maternal genes led to a comprehensive understanding of the principles of axis determination in the embryo, in particular the role of morphogenetic gradients. In 1991, she turned to the study of vertebrate embryology and again broke new ground, carrying out the first systematic search for mutations affecting zebrafish. This work was instrumental in establishing the zebrafish as an important genetic model organism.

Nüsslein-Volhard is currently director of the Max Plank Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany. In addition to the Nobel Prize, she has received many other honors and awards, including the Albert Lasker Award, the Alfred Sloan Prize of General Motors, the Rosenstiel Medal of Brandeis University, the Hans Krebs Medal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies, the Otto Warburg Medal of the Federation of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Distinguished Service Medal from the German Order of Merit.

Physics Freeman J. Dyson
Presented by Nicola N. Khuri

In 1998, WIRED magazine called Freeman J. Dyson "the deepest futurist alive-and the most trustworthy." Dyson, whose prescient sensibility has earned him a level of distinction in physics and in literature that few individuals achieve in their lifetime, will receive the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for his contribution to the field of physics.

As a pre-doctoral fellow at Cornell University in the late 1940s, Dyson made major contributions to our understanding of quantum field theories in general and electrodynamics in particular. His methods provide the best level of agreement between theory and experiment today for any science. In addition, he made seminal contributions to many other areas of physics, such as statistical mechanics, stability of matter and solid state physics.

Dyson is perhaps best known as a scientist with an ability to speculate keenly on the future of science and humankind. His "Dyson shell" was the first theory to suggest an artificial biosphere, or an alternative environment in which life can exist.

Among Dyson's numerous scientific awards are the Wolf Prize in 1981, the Enrico Fermi Award from the U.S. Department of Energy in 1995, and the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, London, the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society and the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1968, 1969 and 1970, respectively. Dyson is also the recipient of twenty honorary degrees.

One of his seven books, Weapons and Hope, won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Non-Fiction in 1984. Dyson's other books include Disturbing the Universe (1979) Origins of Life (1985; 2000, 2nd ed.) Infinite in All Directions (1988) From Eros to Gaia (1992) Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson: With Commentary (1996) Imagined Worlds (1997) and The Sun, the Genome and the Internet (1999). The Rockefeller University honored Dyson with its Lewis Thomas Prize honoring the scientist as poet in 1996.

Dyson was professor of physics for 45 years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton where he is now professor emeritus.

Mathematics David B. Mumford
Presented by Mitchell J. Feigenbaum

David B. Mumford, a mathematician who systematically breaks down intelligence for the purpose of understanding how thinking and perception can be modeled, will be presented with the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for his contributions to the field of mathematics.

Like other great mathematicians, Mumford has shifted areas of interest over the course of his career. He first worked in pure mathematics, in the area of algebraic geometry, from his graduate days in the early 1960s through 1983, as a leader in analyzing the space of curves and Abelian Varieties, for which he received the Fields Medal in 1974.

A MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1984 supported his shift to an area of applied mathematics known as pattern theory. Since then he has worked on machine and natural intelligence, following the statistical approach of pattern theory. Within this context, Dr. Mumford concentrates on visual perception, and creates probability models for the variables of vision.

Mumford received his A.B. degree in mathematics from Harvard University in 1957 and his Ph.D. degree in Mathematics, also from Harvard University, in 1961. He continued at Harvard as an instructor, associate professor and Professor, until he retired as Higgins Professor of Mathematics in 1997. Mumford was chairman of the Mathematics Department at Harvard from 1981 to 1984, and has held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study, Warwick University, The Tata Institute of Fundamental Science in Bombay, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques and the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. He is currently University Professor at Brown, a position to which he was appointed in 1996.

Chemistry H. Gobind Khorana
Presented by Thomas Sakmar

H. Gobind Khorana is a visionary who advanced nucleic acid chemistry and helped to found the new field of molecular biology. He applied chemistry and biochemistry to address the key biological problems of the age–foremost being the elucidation of the genetic code, for which he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He will be presented with the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for his contributions to chemistry.

The first person to synthesize a functional gene–a tour de force that has been called one of the great triumphs of 20th century science–Khorana also devised methods for gene amplification, which were later rediscovered and named PCR. In addition, he developed the chemistry that would evolve into automated DNA synthesis on a solid support, modeled after the technique developed by The Rockefeller University's Bruce Merrifield for peptide synthesis. For the last 20 years, Khorana's research has focused on membrane receptors.

Born of Hindu parents in Raipur, a little village in Punjab, which is now part of West Pakistan, Khorana was the youngest of a family of one daughter and four sons. He applied to two departments at Punjab University, English literature and the honors course in chemistry. He was ultimately accepted in the chemistry program, despite avoiding a required interview because of his shyness. At the end of World War II, Khorana received a Government of India Fellowship and traveled to the University of Liverpool to study organic chemistry.

From 1948 to 1949, Khorana spent a postdoctoral year at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich with Vladimir Prelog. He returned to England in 1950, where he obtained a fellowship to work with G. W. Kenner and A. R. Todd on the peptides related to the recently discovered adrenocorticotropic hormone. It was during this time that Khorana became interested in proteins and nucleic acids. In 1960, after 10 years at the University of British Columbia, Khorana moved to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin. He joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 as Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry.

In 1968, Khorana, together with Robert W. Holley and Marshall W. Nirenberg, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis."

Khorana made a "radical switch" in the middle of the 1970s, and became interested in biological membranes and in bacteriorhodopsin, the light-driven proton pump. This led to his interest in light transduction in the mammalian photoreceptor, rhodopsin, and in the photoreceptor cells in the retina.

Medical Sciences Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein
Presented by Jan Breslow

Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein, who together discovered the receptor that controls cholesterol metabolism, will each be presented with the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for their contributions to the field of medical sciences.

Much of our current understanding of cholesterol's role in heart disease is based upon the collaborative work of Brown and Goldstein. By studying patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, an inherited condition that leads to premature heart attacks in one out of 500 people, they identified receptors that regulate the amount of cholesterol in cells, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in blood.

LDL cholesterol is referred to as the "bad cholesterol," because LDL particles transport cholesterol from the liver to the walls of arteries, where they can then build-up and cause atherosclerosis, or heart disease. Brown and Goldstein showed that patients with familial hypercholesterolemia carry a defective copy of the LDL cholesterol receptor and consequently possess elevated levels of LDL cholesterol in their blood.

In addition to discovering these very important receptors, Brown and Goldstein also revealed how cholesterol is internalized by cells, as well as the mechanisms by which it signals intracellular events and regulates gene expression.

For this seminal research, which not only led to new treatments for preventing heart attacks, but also profoundly influenced the fields of cellular and molecular biology, they have received numerous awards, including the Albert D. Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research (1985), the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (1985) and the National Medal of Science (1988).

Brown is the Paul J. Thomas Professor of Molecular Genetics, and Goldstein is the Regental Professor and chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics, both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. They first formed their long-time research collaboration while doing their residencies in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston from 1966 to 1968. Later, they joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and in 1976, they were both promoted to professor. In addition, they have both held the titles of Regent Professor of the University of Texas (1985) and Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences (1989).

Brown became the Director of the M.D./Ph.D. program in 1996, and Goldstein has been Chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics since 1977.

Brown and Goldstein are members of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Society of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine and many other organizations. They also serve on several editorial boards and have each received numerous honorary degrees. Goldstein is a member of the board of trustees of The Rockefeller University.