Zickler Lecture - 1997
DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES
|
ALFRED G. GILMAN, MD/PhD
Nobel Laureate in Medicine or Physiology, 1994 G PROTEINS AND REGULATION
Tuesday, December 2, 1997 |
About
the Speaker
Alfred G. Gilman was born in New Haven , Connecticut ; his childhood was spent in White Plains , NY . He received a BA degree in Biochemistry from Yale University in 1962 and MD/PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University in 1969. He was a Research Associate in Pharmacology at the National Institutes of Health between 1969-1971. In 1971, Gilman joined the faculty of medicine at the University of Virginia and, in 1981, he assumed his present position as Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas . Dr. Gilman occupies the Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Molecular Neuropharmacology. He was appointed University Regental Professor in 1994.
Gilman's interest in cyclic nucleotides began as a graduate student working on the action of thyroid hormone with Professor Ted Rall at Case Western Reserve. He extended this interest to neurobiology when he joined the laboratory of Marshall Nirenberg at NIH. There Gilman developed a simple and sensitive assay for cyclic AMP that made second messengers accessible to everyone.
As a young faculty member at the University of Virginia , Gilman began the research that led to his seminal work on G proteins. Cells communicate with each other by means of hormones and other signal substances that are released from glands, nerves, and other tissues. Building on earlier findings of Martin Rodbell at NIH, Gilman showed that G proteins act signal transducers. G proteins receive multiple signals from the cell exterior, integrating them and thus control essential life processes in cells. For this discovery, Gilman and Rodbell were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1994.
Dr. Gilman is the senior editor of The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics , the pre-eminent textbook of medical pharmacolÂogy. His many honors and awards include the Abel Award in Pharmacology, Torald Sollman Award, Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, Horwitz Prize, Passano Foundation Award and the Nobel Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He holds honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago and Yale University.