Martin Raff

Martin Raff, 2008

Martin Charles Raff (born  January 15, 1938 in Montreal ) is a Canadian neurologist and cell and molecular biologist . From 1971 to 2002 he worked as part of the MRC Developmental Neurobiology Program at University College London , where he was professor from 1979 until his retirement . His research focused on the intra- and extracellular molecular mechanisms of growth and differentiation as well as the division and apoptosis of cells of the immune system and the nervous system . In the 1990s he was one of the most cited scientists in the UK in the life sciences and was accepted for his achievements in the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences .

Life

Martin Raff was born in 1938 as the son of a general practitioner and a housewife and studied at McGill University in his native Montreal , where he obtained a BS degree in 1959 and completed his medical degree with the MDCM four years later . He then spent two years as an assistant doctor in various departments at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and from 1965 to 1968 in the field of neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston .

From 1968 to 1971 he was a postdoctoral fellow in immunology at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London on a fellowship from the American Society for Multiple Sclerosis . In 1971 he moved to the at University College London -based Developmental Neurobiology Program of the Medical Research Council , to which he was appointed eight years later as a professor. Since his retirement in 2002, he has worked as a scientist at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at University College London. From 1991 to 1995 he was President of the British Society for Cell Biology.

Martin Raff is the father of two sons and a daughter. His son Jordan Raff is Professor of Molecular Cancer Biology at the University of Oxford . Martin Raff made a film appearance in the 70-minute science documentary Death by Design: Where Parallel Worlds Meet , which won a prize at the 1995 Marseille Documentary Film Festival .

Scientific work

Martin Raff (right) together with Peter Walter , Julian Lewis and Alexander Johnson, co-authors of the textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell

During his time at the NIMR, Martin Raff investigated the distribution of the surface antigen Thy-1 and membrane-bound immunoglobulin (IgG) on various cells of the immune system and thus contributed to establishing Thy-1 as a marker for T lymphocytes and surface IgG as a marker for B. - Establish lymphocytes . He played a major role in clarifying the distinction between these two cell types, which was one of the most important findings in immunology in the second half of the 20th century and has shaped the understanding of the function of the immune system to the present day.

In the further course of his career he dealt with the distribution, development and tasks of T cells as well as the basics of B cell function. After moving to University College London, he turned to developmental biology of the nervous system and studied the expression and distribution of various surface markers on nerve cells . The focus of his studies until the end of his career was the precursor cells of the oligodendrocytes . He published over 160 scientific publications during his career .

Martin Raff has been co-author of the textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell published by Bruce Alberts since 1983 , which is considered to be one of the most widely used standard works in the field of molecular cell biology. He also acted as Editor in Chief of the open access journal Journal of Biology and as a member of the editorial board of the journals Journal of Cell Biology , Cell Cycle , Current Opinion in Neurobiology , Current Opinion in Cell Biology , Neurobiology of Disease , Journal of Neuroscience , Cell Research , EMBO Journal and EMBO Reports . In the field of biomedicine, he was one of the most cited researchers in the UK in the 1990s .

Awards

Martin Raff was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 1974 , a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985 and a member of the British Academy of Medical Sciences in 1988. In addition, he has been a member of the Academia Europaea since 1988 and, as a foreign member, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1999 and of the National Academy of Sciences since 2003 . In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

The American Society of Neurology made him an honorary member in 1989. He has been an Honorary Fellow of University College London since 2004 , and McGill University awarded him an honorary doctorate a year later . Awards he has received for his research include the Feldberg Prize (1989), the Hamdan Prize for Apoptosis in Disease and Health (2004), and the Biochemical Society Award (2006).

Works (selection)

• Monoclonal Antibodies to Neural Antigens. Cold Spring Harbor 1981 (as Associate Editor)
• Molecular Biology of the Cell . Fifth edition. New York 2008; previous editions: 1983, 1989, 1994, 2002; German edition: Molecular Biology of the Cell. Fourth edition. Weinheim 2004 (as co-author)
• The Role of Apoptosis in Development, Tissue Homeostasis and Malignancy: Death from Inside Out. London and New York 1995 (as co-editor)
• Cell Growth: Control of Cell Size. Cold Spring Harbor 2004
• Essential Cell Biology. Third edition. New York 2009 (as co-author)

literature

• Martin Raff. In: Larry R. Squire: The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography. Volume 5. Elsevier Academic Press, Amsterdam and Boston 2006, ISBN 0-12-370514-2 , pp. 505-550 (with bibliography)
• Karen Birmingham: Bioprofiles: Martin Raff. In: Nature Medicine . 7 (9) / 2001. Nature Publishing Group, pp. 985/986, ISSN  1078-8956
• Béatrice Durand, Valérie Wallace: Editor's Corner — Portrait of an Editorial Board Member: Martin Raff. In: Cell Cycle. 2/2003. Landes Bioscience, pp. 1-2, ISSN  1538-4101

Web links

• MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology: Martin Raff
• UCSD Guestbook: Neuroscientist Martin Raff Interview with Martin Raff (video, approx. 28 minutes running time; English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The information on Martin Raff's life, work and awards are based on autobiographical statements; see Larry R. Squire, Amsterdam and Boston 2006
2. ↑ Death by Design: Where Parallel Worlds Meet in the Internet Movie Database (English)
3. ↑ Citation Superstars of the UK, 1990-1999. In: Science Watch . 10th year, issue 6 from November / December 1999
4. ↑ Fellows of the AAAS: Martin Raff. (No longer available online.) American Association for the Advancement of Science, archived from the original on February 2, 2018 ; accessed on February 2, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.