George Emil Palade

George Emil Palade ( born November 19, 1912 in Iasi, Romania, † October 7, 2008 in Del Mar, California ) was an American researcher of Romanian origin and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1974.

Palade was born the son of a professor of philosophy and a teacher in Iasi. After training in his hometown and in Buzău 1930 he began the study of medicine at the University of Bucharest, which he graduated in 1940 with a doctorate degree. After the Second World War, he went in 1945 to further studies in the United States. There he met in 1946 at the Rockefeller University in New York City on Albert Claude, who inspired him to work with the electron microscope. In 1952 he received the U.S. citizenship.

Focus of his work were electron microscopic investigations of cell structures such as mitochondria, chloroplasts and the Golgi apparatus, in 1953 he gave the first description of ribosomes. From 1958 to 1973 he was a professor at the Rockefeller Institute. 1967 Palade was awarded the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the 1971 Dickson Prize in Science. In 1973 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 1974, he shared with Albert Claude and Christian de Duve the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell ". In 1981 he received the E. B. Wilson Medal.

From 1973 to 1990 he was a professor at Yale University and since 1990 at the University of California, San Diego.