Full Professorship at Harvard University for former GDR Scientist

Tom Rapoport works on the transport of proteins in the cell, an area in which he already has won high international acclaim during GDR times. The translocation of proteins is vital to every organism. Tom Rapoport’ sinterest focuses on the endoplasmic reticulum. This organelle ​“labels” proteins and sends them off to where they are needed — either to the outside or inside of the cell.

Born in the United States (Cincinnati, Ohio), where his parents took refuge from Nazi terror in the Third Reich, Tom Rapoport and his parents moved to the GDR in the early fifties during the McCarthy era. Tom Rapoport graduated with honours and earned his Ph.D. from Humboldt University in 1972. Dr. Rapoport immediately became an investigator at the Central Institute for Molecular Biology of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR In Berlin-Buch, which in 1992 became the MDC.