Martin Raff

Charles Martin Raff ( born January 15, 1938 in Montreal ) is a Canadian neurologist and cell and molecular biologist. He worked from 1971 to 2002 as part of the MRC Developmental Neurobiology Programme at University College London, where he served as professor from 1979 until his retirement. The focus of his research were the intra-and extracellular molecular mechanisms of growth and differentiation as well as the division and apoptosis of cells of the immune system and the nervous system. He scored in the 1990s in the life sciences to the most cited scientists in the UK and has been included for its benefits, among others in the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences.

Life

Martin Raff was born in 1938 the son of a physician working as a family doctor and a housewife and studied at McGill University in his hometown of Montreal, where he earned a BS degree in 1959 and four years later his medical studies with the MDCM completed. His subsequent time as a junior doctor, he completed two years in various departments at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, and from 1965 to 1968 in the area of ​​neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital ( MGH) in Boston.

From 1968 to 1971 he worked with a grant from the American Society for Multiple Sclerosis as a postdoctoral fellow in immunology at the National Institute for Medical Research ( NIMR ) in London. In 1971 he moved to the University College London-based Developmental Neurobiology Program of the Medical Research Council, where he was appointed professor eight years later. Since his retirement in 2002, he works as a scientist at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London. From 1991 to 1995 he was serving as the president of the British Society for Cell Biology.

Martin Raff is a father of two sons and a daughter. His son Jordan Raff is Professor of Molecular Cancer Biology at the University of Oxford. In the 70 -minute science documentary Death by Design: Where Parallel Worlds Meet, which was in 1995 awarded at the International Documentary Film Festival of Marseille with a price, Martin Raff had a film appearance.

Scientific work

Martin Raff examined during his time at NIMR, the distribution of the surface antigen Thy-1 and membrane-bound immunoglobulin (IgG) on various cells of the immune system and thereby contributed instrumental in Thy-1 as a marker for T- lymphocytes and surface IgG as a marker for B lymphocytes to establish. He had so significant contribution to the elucidation of the distinction between these two cell types, which was one of the most important findings in immunology in the second half of the 20th century and up to the present understanding characterizes the function of the immune system. Later in his career he was concerned with the distribution, development and the functions of T cells as well as the basics of B -cell function. After his move to the University College London, he turned to the developmental biology of the nervous system and examined the expression and distribution of various surface markers on nerve cells. The focus of his studies there, the precursor cells of oligodendrocytes to the end of his career. He published during his career, more than 160 scientific publications.

Martin Raff is a co-author since 1983, edited by Bruce Alberts textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell, which is known worldwide as one of the most widely used standard works in the field of molecular cell biology. He has also served as chief editor ( editor in chief ) of the open- access journal Journal of Biology and a member of the editorial boards of the journals Journal of Cell Biology, Cell Cycle, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Current Opinion in Cell Biology, Neurobiology of Disease, Journal of Neuroscience, Cell research, EMBO Journal and EMBO reports. In the field of biomedicine he scored in the 1990's to the most cited researchers in the UK.

Awards

Martin Raff was elected in 1974 as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, in 1985 a fellow of the Royal Society and in 1988 a member of the British Academy of Medical Sciences. In addition, he is a member of the Academia Europaea since 1988 and as a foreign member since 1999 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, since 2003, the National Academy of Sciences. The American Society of Neurology in 1989 appointed him an honorary member. Since 2004 he is an Honorary Fellow of University College London, McGill University later awarded him a year an honorary doctorate. Among the prizes he received for his research achievements include the Feldberg Prize (1989 ), the Hamdan Prize for Apoptosis in Disease and Health ( 2004) and the Biochemical Society Award ( 2006).

Works (selection)

  • Monoclonal Antibodies to Neural antigen. Cold Spring Harbor, 1981 ( co-editor )
  • Molecular Biology of the Cell. Fifth Edition. New York 2008; Previous editions: 1983, 1989, 1994, 2002; German edition: Molecular biology of the cell. Fourth Edition. Weinheim 2004 ( co-author )
  • The Role of Apoptosis in Development, Tissue Homeostasis and Malignancy: Death from Inside Out. London and New York, 1995 ( co-editor )
  • Cell Growth: Control of Cell Size. Cold Spring Harbor 2004
  • Essential Cell Biology. Third Edition. New York 2009 ( co-author )
Cellular differentiation Programmed cell death Peter Walter B cell Open access journal
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