About the author

 

BA from Harvard College in 1967 and PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1972, Prof. Roger Kornberg is Winzer Professor in Medicine in the Department of Structural Biology at  Stanford University. In his doctoral research, he demonstrated the diffusional motions of lipids in membranes, termed flip-flop and lateral diffusion. He was a postdoctoral fellow and member of  the scientific staff at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England from 1972-5, where he discovered the nucleosome, the basic unit of DNA coiling in chromosomes. He moved to  his present position in 1978, where his research has focused on the mechanism and regulation of eukaryotic gene transcription. Notable findings include the demonstration of the role of  nucleosomes in transcriptional regulation, the establishment of a yeast RNA polymerase II transcription system and the isolation of all the proteins involved, the discovery of the Mediator of  transcriptional regulation, the development of two-dimensional protein crystallization and its application to transcription proteins, and the atomic structure determination of an RNA polymerase II  transcribing complex.

 

Prof. Kornberg was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. He has received many awards, including the 2001 Welch prize, highest award in chemistry in the United States, the  2002 Leopold Mayer Prize, highest award in biomedical sciences of the French Academy of Sciences, and the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (unshared). Romberg's closest collaborator has  been his wife, Dr. Yahli Lorch. They have three children, Guy, Maya, and Gil.