Walter Gilbert shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1980 for his codevelopment of a method for determining the sequence of nucleotide links in the chainlike molecules of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). He developed the technique of using gel electrophoresis to decipher the order of the nucleotide sequences of DNA segments; his DNA-sequencing techniques revolutionized molecular biology, becoming fundamental in the study of DNA and making possible the Human Genome Project.
In 1979 Gilbert joined a group of other scientists and businessmen, including Phillip A. Sharp, to form Biogen, a commercial genetic-engineering research corporation. Biogen was an early pioneer in the field of biotechnology, producing in association with Eli Lilly the first recombinant human insulin in 1980. Gilbert resigned from Biogen in 1984 and, while continuing to teach at Harvard University, became a chief proponent of the Human Genome Project, talking with scientists and the media to emphasize the project’s potential contribution to biology, medicine, and biotechnology. his laboratory remains an active center of molecular biollogical research.
Gilbert was educated as a theoretical physicist, completing his undergraduate education at Harvard and receiving his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1957. He began his career at Harvard as a physicist but within a few years became fascinated with DNA, largely as a result of a growing friendship with James Watson, whom he met while at Cambridge. By 1964 Gilbert was officially tenured as a biophysicist at Harvard. Gilbert worked with Watson and others in discovering messenger RNA, the transient intermediary molecule formed as a copy of DNA and involved in protein synthesis. Also in the 1960s Gilbert contributed to discoveries of molecules associated with the lac operon and furthered the understanding of DNA synthesis. In addition to his development with Allan Maxam of DNA sequencing, Gilbert provided some of the pivotal early experiments in recombinant DNA technology. Today he is a professor emeritus at Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology; Gilbert and Sharp shared the 2002 Biotechnology Heritage Award.
