Bruce Alberts

Dr. Bruce Alberts (b. 14 April 1938, Chicago) is an American biochemist. He is noted particularly for his extensive study of the protein complexes that allow chromosome replicatation, required for a living cells to divide. He was President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005 and is a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York^[1]. He will be the next Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Science, with the appointment to take effect in March, 2008.^[2]

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Career

Alberts graduated from Harvard College, with a degree in biochemical sciences, and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1965.^[3] He then went to the University of Geneva as a postdoctoral fellow to work with Richard Epstein on genes involved in DNA replication of phage T4. In 1966, Alberts joined the Department of Biochemical Sciences at Princeton University as an Assistant Professor. In 1972, he became an Associate Professor and in 1974 a full Professor. In 1976, he accepted a position as professor and vice-chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1980, Alberts was awarded an American Cancer Society Lifetime Research Professorship. In 1985, he was named chair of the Department.

Alberts has long been committed to the improvement of science education, dedicating much of his time to educational projects such as City Science, a program seeking to improve science teaching in San Francisco elementary schools. He has served on the advisory board of the National Science Resources Center a joint project of the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution working with teachers, scientists, and school systems to improve teaching of science as well as on the National Academy of Sciences' National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment.

He has served in different capacities on a number of prestigious advisory and editorial boards, including as chair of the Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council. Until his election as President of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995 he was president-elect of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He currently serves on the advisory board of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution. December 17th, 2007, it was announced that Alberts had accepted the position of editor-in-chief of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's flagship publication, Science (journal).

For the period 2000 to 2009, Dr. Alberts is the Co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, a new advisory institution in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of 15 science academies from around the world.

Publications

Alberts has had a productive research career in the field of DNA replication and cell division; His textbook, Molecular Biology of the Cell, now in its 5th Edition, is the standard cell biology textbook in most universities; the 4th edition of the book is freely available from National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf. This book and its more basic, undergraduate counterpart Essential Cell Biology have been translated into various languages.

Alberts served as the President of the National Academy of Sciences for two terms from 1993 until 2005.

References