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A young Leland Hartwell with his dog Sparky.
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Leland Hartwell, President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
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Robert Horvitz, Whitehead Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Michael Hengartner, age three, with toy goat.
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Michael Hengartner, age 18, in his high school chemistry lab.
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Michael Hengartner with his kids, Alex and Sophie, 1999.
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Michael Hengartner, Associate Professor, Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
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Scott Lowe working in his laboratory.
Lee Hartwell was one of the first to use yeast as a model system, and he identified many of the genes involved in the cell cycle. Bob Horvitz and Mike Hengartner used C. elegans to work out the mechanism of programmed cell death. Scott Lowe's research has shown how the regulation of the cell cycle affect cancer. LELAND HARTWELL (1939-)
Lee Hartwell was born in Los Angeles. His father was a sign maker, and Hartwell would help him in his shop after school. Hartwell developed an interest in figuring out how things work, especially electrical gadgets. This natural curiosity did not mean that he was a good student. He did well enough but didn't really get involved with science until after high school. He was accepted to the California Institute of Technology and initially thought he would study physics. However, he became interested in "DNA" and finished college with a degree in biology. Hartwell then went on to earn a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After his Ph.D., Hartwell went to the Salk Institute because he wanted to work with Renato Dulbecco. Hartwell already knew he wanted to work on cell division, which was one of Dulbecco's research interests. Despite the cramped conditions - the Salk was a more primitive institute at the time - Hartwell enjoyed his post-doctoral years and learned a lot from his mentors. Hartwell then accepted an assistant professorship at the University of California, Irvine. He also made the rather risky decision to start using yeast as a model system. Not many people were using yeast at the time, but Hartwell wanted and needed a simpler experimental system to study basic questions of cell growth. Hartwell is a pioneer in yeast genetics, and has used yeast to identify many of the genes involved in protein synthesis as well as the cell cycle. In 1968, Hartwell moved to the Department of Genetics at the University of Washington and it was there that he did most of the work on cell cycle genes. He stayed at the University of Washington until 1996 when he moved to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His lab is working on the molecular mechanisms that maintain and support gene variations, which can eventually lead to the evolution of new species. In 1997, Hartwell was appointed President and Director of the "Hutch," and spends most of his time integrating the basic, applied and clinical effort of interdisciplinary cancer research. In 1998, he won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Prize for his innovative and pioneering work. Hartwell shared in the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on defining the cell cycle. HOWARD ROBERT HORVITZ (1947-)
Bob Horvitz was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother was a teacher and his father was an accountant. Both parents instilled in Horvitz a respect and passion for learning. As a child, Horvitz maintained a butterfly collection, and thought that biology involved collecting and classifying dead things. He was a good student and interested in many subjects including English and journalism. He received two undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one in Mathematics and one in Economics. He considered going into law, medicine, business and even computer science. But because he didn't know anything about, and was intrigued by molecular biology (Horvitz didn't take any biology courses until his senior year in university) he entered graduate school at Harvard University to study biology. Horvitz was interested in neurobiology, but because of his limited experience with biology in general, he started working with phage, to learn the basics. Horvitz was a graduate student in the laboratories of James Watson and Walter Gilbert, an experience he found "interesting." After his doctorate in 1974, Horvitz went to the Medical Research Council in Cambridge to work with Sydney Brenner. Brenner was advocating a new model system for studying development. Caenorhabitis elegans is a non-parasitic roundworm that is amenable to genetic analysis, and is easy to grow and maintain. Horvitz saw the advantages of C. elegans, and used it to study a number of developmental systems including neuronal development, the ras pathway and the genetics of cell lineage. Programmed cell death is only one of the many ongoing projects in his lab. In 1978, Horvitz accepted a position in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is now Whitehead Professor of Biology. He has been an Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 1988, and has won a number of awards for his work including the 1999 Gairdner Foundation Award. Horvitz has been a member of the National Academy of Science since 1991 and serves on a number of editorial boards and advisory committees, both governmental and commercial. He has a number of patents pending based on work done in his lab. Horvitz is a co-founder and Chairman of Idun Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotech company based in La Jolla, California that is developing therapeutics focusing on apoptosis. Horvitz enjoys reading in his spare time, particularly British contemporary novels. Horvitz shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with colleagues John Sulston and Sdyney Brenner. All three made major contributions in the field of developmental biology using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. MICHAEL OTMAR HENGARTNER (1966-)
Mike Hengartner was born in St. Gallin, Switzerland. His father was a professor of mathematics and moved his family from Switzerland to Paris, France, then Bloomington, Indiana before finally settling in Montreal, Canada. This globe-trotting at a young age gave Hengartner a facility for language. He speaks English, French and German. Hengartner never had any doubts about being a scientist. His main problem was deciding which branch of science to focus on. Mathematics was out of the question because his older brother went into math. Hengartner initially thought of going into physics, but then read a book called What is Life? by Erwin Schrodinger. Hengartner realized that most physicists were switching fields and becoming biologists. Hengartner decided, therefore, not to waste time with physics. He graduated with a B.S. in biochemistry from Laval University in Quebec in 1988. Hengartner was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's biology department for graduate school. He was eager to work with Nobel Laureate David Baltimore on viral proteins. However, before making the final decision, Hengartner was persuaded by a friend to attend a lab meeting where he met Bob Horvitz who ran a Caenorhabiditis elegans lab. At the time, the C. elegans field was still rather new and Hengartner didn't really like the idea of working with worms. Yet, when Horvitz approached Hengartner to ask if he wanted to work in his lab, Hengartner was too "much of a coward" to say no. It did work out for the best because in a subsequent discussion about possible projects in the lab, Hengartner became fascinated with the idea of programmed cell death, and being able to determine the mechanism using C. elegans. In 1994, Hengartner finished his doctorate in Horvitz's lab by cloning and characterizing ced-9, a gene necessary for programmed cell death in C. elegans. Hengartner's work in Horvitz's lab led him to other genes involved in cell death both in C. elegans and in other organisms. After his Ph.D., Hengartner became a Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). He is currently an Associate Professor of the Watson School of Biological Sciences at CSHL. Hengartner also teaches at SUNY Stony Brook and organizes seminars and courses at CSHL and a number of other scientific institutions. He is an Executive Officer of the Cell Death Society and a cofounder of two biotech companies: Devgen, based in Belgium, and ForScience, based in New York. He is also on the editorial board of a number of science journals including Current Biology and Annals of Improbable Research. Hengartner has a number of patents pending based on his work. Hengartner spends most of his leisure time with his family. He plays volleyball in the CSHL summer league, and believes that his poor game is due to his lack of height (Mike is 5'9"). Hengartner recently won the haiku portion of the 2000 Blackford Coffee Poetry Contest (Blackford is CSHL's cafeteria) with this submission: Black oozy syrup Brew'd daily by the gallons Free but at what price? SCOTT WILLIAM LOWE (1963-)
Scott Lowe was born in Racine, Wisconsin. Although he was good at science and took most of the courses in high school, he never was very interested in science. He actually thought he would become a lawyer. In 1982, Lowe started at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in chemical engineering. He thought that chemical engineering had something to do with chemicals and engineering (math). He quickly found out that it wasn't the field for him, and decided to take some general courses to figure out what he did want to do. Lowe really became interested in biology and molecular genetics through his undergraduate biochemistry and genetics courses. As an undergraduate project, he went to work in a research lab, and after graduation stayed in the lab for two more years as a technician. In 1988, Lowe went to the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start his graduate work. Coincidentally, Michael Hengartner started graduate school on the same day in the same department. Little did Lowe know at the time, but his interest in oncogenes would one day overlap with Hengartner's interest in cell death genes. After his Ph.D., Lowe stayed at MIT for post-doctorate work and began studying the effects a known tumor suppressor, p53, on cell growth. He found that in radiation-damaged cells, p53 is needed for programmed cell death. Connecting programmed cell death with tumor cell growth gave new insight as to how cancer cells proliferate. In 1994, Lowe was offered a research position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). He is currently a professor at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at CSHL. Lowe's lab continues to work on the p53 pathway and the effects cell death genes have on the growth, proliferation and repair of tumor cells. Lowe spends most of his free time with his family, especially his two young children. He claims to be able to sing the introduction to "Thomas the Tank Engine" backwards and forwards. He also likes to hike and camp and skiing is his favorite sport. | |
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LinksCaenorhabditis elegans WWW serverA must for any worm researcher, this web site has resources and current information on worm research. WormBaseA prototype, this web site will eventually contain all the sequences from the worm genome. It will be searchable and cross-referenced to mutations and known expression patterns. ApoptosisFrom the St. George's Hospital Medical School, this site has information on what happens within the cell during programmed cell death. Bibliography
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