Donald A. Glaser

Donald Arthur Glaser ( born September 21, 1926 in Cleveland, Ohio, † February 28, 2013 in Berkeley, California ) was an American physicist, molecular biologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate.

Life

Donald Arthur Glaser was born on 21 September 1926 as the son of businessman William J. Glaser and his wife Lena Glaser in Cleveland / Ohio. After attending public schools in Cleveland Heights, he studied physics and mathematics at Case Institute of Technology. After his B. S. In 1946 he taught a semester at Case Institute of Technology. He went in the autumn of the year at the California Institute of Technology and received his PhD in 1950 in mathematics and physics.

He has already received in 1949 a position as lecturer at the Physics Department of the University of Michigan and in 1957 was appointed professor in 1959 he moved to the University of California, Berkeley.

Glaser married in 1960 Ruth Bonnie Thompson, with whom he has two children: the pediatrician Louise Ferris Addison and the CEO of a company in the computer industry, William Thompson Glaser. He married in 1975 the painter Lynn Bercovitz.

Work

The research focus Glaser in his early years was in the range of elementary particle physics, where his interest in experimental techniques was that might be helpful in this area. So he constructed several diffusion cloud chambers and spark counters and developed the ideas that led to the invention of the bubble chamber in 1952. In the following years he developed another bubble chamber types for experiments in high energy physics and himself led experiments at Cosmotrom of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and the Bevatron of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in California. He was awarded in 1960 " for the invention of the bubble chamber " with the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Glaser turned in 1962 to the field of molecular biology, which had interested him since his studies at CalTech. After the realization that the DNA and RNA is made up of micro-organisms as well as the more advanced creatures, the foundations of modern biotechnology were placed, Glaser studied with his students the control of DNA synthesis in bacteria. He could also demonstrate using mutant Chinese hamster ovary increased sensitivity to ultraviolet light, making these cells could turn into cancer cells. The seven genes involved in this process are also found in humans, with the same defects to the type of cancer " xeroderma pigmentosum " lead.

As Glaser noted in 1970 that the molecular indeed ready presented a very detailed knowledge that has been but little used in medicine or other areas, he and two friends the first biotechnology company, founding this branch of industry, the major impact on medicine and agriculture.

Since the experimental effort for the biochemical and molecular technologies increased very rapidly by this industrialization of biotechnology, he turned again to another area - in neurobiology, specifically the visual system of man. This is one of the most studied areas of the human brain, the " circuit diagram" is very well understood. Thus, on the basis of computer models of human vision, are made predictions about the visual capabilities of humans and monkeys, which can be checked with psychophysical and electrophysical methods. These models have already led to descriptions of the perception of movement and depth, and led to the prediction of two new illusion effects with respect to the movement, which are currently being reviewed by Glaser's research group at humans and apes.

Awards

  • Henry Russell Award, University of Michigan, 1953
  • Charles Vernon Boys Prize, Physical Society, 1958
  • American Physical Society Prize, 1959
  • Nobel Prize in Physics, 1960
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