Prof. Roger Tsien Honoured with Max Delbrueck Medal

Dr. Tsien’s research has been at the interfaces between
organic chemistry, cell biology, and neurobiology, starting long before such
interdisciplinary efforts became fashionable. He is best known for designing
and building molecules that either report or perturb signal transduction inside
living cells. His current research goals are to understand how the spatial and
temporal dynamics of signal transduction orchestrate complex cellular responses
such as gene expression and synaptic plasticity. These goals will require
improved molecular techniques to see and manipulate small-molecule messengers,
protein phosphorylation, and protein-protein interaction in live cells and
organisms.

Roger Y. Tsien was born in New York City in 1952. He
received his A.B. in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College in 1972. A
Marshall Scholarship took him to the Physiological Laboratory at the University
of Cambridge (UK), where he received his Ph.D. in 1977 and remained as a
Research Fellow until 1981. He became a full Professor in the Department of
Physiology-Anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989 he moved
to the University of California, San Diego, where he is an Investigator of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor in the Departments of
Pharmacology and of Chemistry & Biochemistry. 

His honors include the W. Alden Spencer Award in
Neurobiology from Columbia University (1991), the Artois-Baillet-Latour Health
Prize, Belgium, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, Canada, and the
American Heart Association Basic Research Prize (all in 1995), and the Pearse
Prize of the Royal Microscopical Society (2000). In 2002 he received the Award
for Creative Invention from the American Chemical Society, the Christian B.
Anfinsen Award from the Protein Society, and the Heineken Prize for
Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences. Dr. Tsien was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. 

Roger Y. Tsien was born in New York City in 1952. He
received his A.B. in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College in 1972. A
Marshall Scholarship took him to the Physiological Laboratory at the University
of Cambridge (UK), where he received his Ph.D. in 1977 and remained as a
Research Fellow until 1981. He became a full Professor in the Department of
Physiology-Anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989 he moved
to the University of California, San Diego, where he is an Investigator of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor in the Departments of
Pharmacology and of Chemistry & Biochemistry. His honors include the W.
Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology from Columbia University (1991), the
Artois-Baillet-Latour Health Prize, Belgium, the Gairdner Foundation
International Award, Canada, and the American Heart Association Basic Research
Prize (all in 1995), and the Pearse Prize of the Royal Microscopical Society
(2000). In 2002 he received the Award for Creative Invention from the American
Chemical Society, the Christian B. Anfinsen Award from the Protein Society, and
the Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Tsien was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences in 1998. 

The Max Delbrück Medal is given to an outstanding scientist
every year, since 1992. It is awarded at the ​„Berlin Lectures on Molecular
Medicine“, organized by the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)
Berlin-Buch (a national research laboratory of the Helmholtz Association of
German Research Centres), and the three Universities in Berlin and the
biomedical research institutions, and the Schering Forschungsgesellschaft
(Research Foundation).

The first Berlin-Lecturer was Professor Günter Blobel from
the Rockefeller University, New York and Nobel laureate for medicine in 1999.
His successor was the geneticist and this year‘s Nobel laureate for medicine,
Professor Sydney Brenner from the University of Cambridge (UK). Next came the
neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux from the Pasteur-Institut in Paris
(France), the cancer researcher Professor Robert A. Weinberg from the Whitehead
Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge/​USA,
the prion researcher Professor Charles Weissmann from the University of Zürich
(Switzerland), Professor Svante Pääbo (Ludwig Maximilians University Munich and
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, both in Germany),
the American Nobel laureate for chemistry from 1980, Paul Berg (Stanford
University/​California) and the American biochemist Professor Joan Argetsinger
Steitz from Yale University, New Haven/​Connecticut (USA). In 2001 Professor Eric
Lander from the Whitehead Institute received the Max Delbrück Medal.