Renowned researcher Uhlenbeck wins Lipmann lectureship for work on RNA biochemistry
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has awarded Olke Uhlenbeck, an emeritus professor at Northwestern University, the Fritz Lipmann Lectureship. Awarded every two years, this lectureship recognizes investigators who contribute to the conceptual advancements of biochemistry, bioenergetics and molecular biology.
In a joint nomination, Daniel Herschlag of Stanford University and Rachel Green of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine lauded Uhlenbeck and said that many consider him “the father of RNA.”
“Olke is a rare scientist who is equally excited about the results of others as he is about his own,” wrote Herschlag and Green in their nomination letter. “He has a remarkable perspective on the scientific enterprise.”
Herschlag notes that “Olke is a person you call when you have a new exciting result — to both have someone to share that enthusiasm and to find out if someone else already found that out and you missed it. The number of phone calls that Olke would get from prominent scientists — at least in the days before email — must must have been remarkable.”
After completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Uhlenbeck pursued a Ph.D. in biophysics at Harvard University in the laboratory of Paul Doty. Thereafter, he joined the faculties of the University of Illinois in 1971 and the University of Colorado in 1986. Currently, he is the Board of Trustees professor of chemistry and molecular biosciences at Northwestern University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Fritz Lipmann Lectureship provides a plaque, a $3,000 prize, and transportation and expenses to the Experimental Biology 2013 conference in Boston to present a lecture. The lecture will take place at 2:55 p.m. April 23 at the Boston Convention Center.
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