Richard B. Setlow
Richard Burton Setlow (born January 19, 1921 in New York City - † April 6, 2015 ) was an American biophysicist . He was a pioneer in the study of DNA repair .
Richard Setlow grew up in Brooklyn , attended Townsend Harris High School and studied physics at Swarthmore College with a bachelor's degree in 1941. He received his doctorate in physics from Yale University in 1947 , where he already turned to biophysics and radiation biology. He taught until 1961 as an associate professor at Yale (where he was director for undergraduate studies in physics and biophysics) at the local medical school and then went to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory , from 1964 as group leader. There he turned to research into DNA repair. From 1967 to 1974 he was Professor of Biomedicine at the University of Tennessee at Oak Ridge. In 1974 he went to the Brookhaven National Laboratory as a Senior Scientist . There he became head of the biology department in 1979 and associate director for biology in 1986 , which he remained until 1998. Then he turned back to research. In 2006 he became Senior Scientist Emeritus . He was also an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University .
In the 1960s he showed that UV radiation leads to defects in the DNA of bacteria, which were repaired by enzymes (discovery of base excision repair in 1964).
In the 1990s he showed in experiments on hybrid, UV-sensitive fish that not only UV-B (the short-wave components) radiation from the sun is responsible for melanomas, as was previously assumed, but also UV-A (the longer-wave components) . He also investigated the dangers of cosmic radiation for manned space missions and the influence of light-induced chemical reactions in the skin on the development of skin cancer.
Setlow was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1973), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988). In 1988 he received the Enrico Fermi Prize . He was an honorary doctor from York University and the University of Essen .
Fonts
- with Phil Hanawalt (Ed.): Molecular Mechanisms for Repair of DNA, 2 volumes, Plenum 1975
- with Ernest C. Pollard: Molecular Biophysics, Addison-Wesley 1962
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Birth and career data up to 2004 according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Setlow, Richard B. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Setlow, Richard Burton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 19, 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 6, 2015 |