H. Robert Horvitz

Howard Robert Horvitz ( born May 8, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois) is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA. In 2002 he received along with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for uncovering the mechanisms of programmed cell death (apoptosis).

Life and work

Horvitz's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Galicia. His father, first a simple File Clerk, began an evening studying chemistry, but he dropped out for financial reasons. Later he became a tax accountant. His mother worked as a teacher, Horvitz remembers a family in which the acquisition of education and scientific curiosity were highly respected.

His father died in 1989 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS ), which H. Robert Horvitz prompted to explore these degenerative nerve disease.

Academic Career

Theses

From 1974 to 1978 worked at the Horvitz Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB ) in Cambridge, UK. At this Institute John E. Sulston had cleared up as far along with Sydney Brenner embryonic cell development of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, that the origin of all 959 cells was known. It had been shown that 131 cells were indeed formed during embryonic cell development, but in the later worm were no longer available because they were subject to a "genetically programmed cell death " (apoptosis).

Further work has investigated this mechanism and its genetic programming Horvitz details. The mechanisms of apoptosis proved by C. elegans, the simplest built animal with a nervous system than to humans. Disturbances in the flow are responsible for some cancers, autoimmune diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease belongs.

Awards

Cambridge (Massachusetts) John Sulston Massachusetts General Hospital
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