Zickler Lecture - 1989
DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES
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Howard M. Temin, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate McArdle Laboratory, University of Wisconsin Retrovirus Evolution and Variation |
About the Speaker
Howard Temin was born in 1934 in Philadelphia . He received his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1955 and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1959. His graduate studies, performed in the laboratory of Professor Renato Dulbecco, focused on Rous sarcoma virus.
In 1960, Dr. Temin took a position in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, he performed seminal experiments that led, in 1964, to his formulation of the DNA provirus hypothesis. This proposal was considered heretical, as it conflicted with the central dogma of molecular biology at the time, which held that information transfer in nature occurred only from DNA to RNA. In subsequent years, Temin accumulated indirect evidence supporting his theory, but the major breakthrough occurred in 1970 when he and, independently, David Baltimore, documented the presence of an enzyme in RNA tumor virus particles -- reverse transcriptase -- capable of making a DNA copy from RNA.
In 1975, Howard Temin received the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, along with Baltimore and Dulbecco, his Ph.D. adviser, for their work in understanding the role played by viruses in the initiation of cancer. He has received many other honors, including the Albert & Mary Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research, election to the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. and membership in the Royal Society of London . Since 1974, he has served as the American Cancer Society Professor of Viral Oncology and Cell Biology.