Don Craig Wiley

Don Craig Wiley (born October 21, 1944 in Akron , Ohio , † November 2001 in Memphis , Tennessee ) was an American biophysicist , molecular biologist and microbiologist . He is considered a pioneer in the transition from protein crystallography to modern structural molecular biology, especially for some classes of molecules on the cell surface that are important for cell-cell recognition ( MHC complex, virus glycoproteins such as hemagglutinin ).

Wiley grew up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey . He studied physics at Tufts University (Bachelor in 1966) and received his PhD in biophysics from Harvard University in 1971 with William Lipscomb . At that time the X-ray structure analysis of the hitherto largest molecules, he succeeded aspartate - Carbamoyltransferase (ACTase). In 1971 he became an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Harvard, an associate professor in 1975 and a professor in 1979. Since 1987 his laboratory has been affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute . He was an internationally recognized expert on infectious diseases such as AIDS and Ebola.

In the mid-1970s, he achieved another breakthrough in determining the structure of the hemagglutinin of the influenza virus (working with John Skehel and Ian Wilson ). The structure was published in Nature in 1981 and he subsequently also investigated the change in shape of hemagglutinin and its role in the entry of the virus into the host cell. From the end of the 1970s he also dealt with the MHC complex in immunology and his group at Harvard was significantly involved in the structure elucidation.

He was last seen alive on November 15, 2001. His rental car was found without the driver on a bridge over the Mississippi in Memphis, and his body was found a month later downriver in the Mississippi near Natchez . The car had scratches. The injuries were compatible with those of a fall from the bridge into the river and showed no evidence of third-party fault. The coroner suspected an accident. Wiley had previously celebrated in a hotel with colleagues and wanted to stay with his father in a suburb of Memphis, but the bridge was in a different direction. There was no motive for suicide, he was expecting his wife and children in Memphis shortly afterwards.

Wiley has received numerous scientific awards. In 1989 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1991 to the National Academy of Sciences and 1996 to the American Philosophical Society . He received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (1990), the Emil von Behring Prize (1992), the William B. Coley Award (1993), the Passano Award (1993), a Gairdner Foundation International Award (1994 ), the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1995) and with Jack L. Strominger the Japan Prize (1999).

He was married to the Icelander Katrin Valgeirsdottir and then learned the Icelandic language himself.

Web links

• Obituary at Harvard
• Literature by and about Don Craig Wiley in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the death of Wiley ( Memento from October 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Member History: Don Craig Wiley. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 10, 2018 .