Harry Noller

Harry Francis Noller (born June 10, 1939 in Oakland, California ) is an American molecular biologist and since 1992 director of the Center for Molecular Biology of RNA at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Under his guidance, the complete structure of a ribosome was deciphered for the first time worldwide with the help of X-ray crystallography in the bacterium Thermus thermophilus . Work based on this led to detailed insights into how ribosomes transfer the genetic information from messenger RNA into the synthesis of proteins .

Harry Noller passed his bachelor's degree (BA) in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1960 and received his doctorate in chemistry under Sidney A. Bernhard at the University of Oregon in 1965 . He then worked until 1968 at the Institute for Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva with Alfred Tissières. In 1968 he returned to California and has since worked at the University of California, Santa Cruz : first as a research assistant and from 1973 as a lecturer in the field of biology, since 1979 as professor of molecular biology, cell biology and developmental biology .

Noller has been a member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 1992 , in 1999 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2003 he was elected as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences . For his work in the field of RNA and ribosome research he was awarded - together with Ada Yonath - the Massry Prize in 2004 and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize in 2007 ; also in 2007 he received the Gairdner Foundation International Award . In 2012 he was awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva ., For 2017 he was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences .

Web links

• Web presence of Noller's laboratory in Santa Cruz
• Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 2007 for Ada Yonath and Harry Noller. Press release from the Paul Ehrlich Foundation of December 12, 2006