About the 2008 Heritage Day Award Recipients

Yuan T. Lee
Othmer Gold Medal

Although well known for studies on reactive scatterings, Yuan T. Lee and his research group have made major contributions in the elucidation of various protonated molecular clusters by obtaining infrared spectra. Lee has also directed much of his attention to the advancement of international scientific developments and to the promotion of general public affairs.

Lee was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and received his B.S. from the National Taiwan University. After finishing his M.S. degree at Tsinghua University, he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1965 he began his research on reactive scattering experiments in ion-molecule reaction as a postdoctoral fellow.

In 1967 Lee accepted a research fellowship at Harvard University and then became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where he rapidly made his laboratory the North American capital of molecular beam study. Lee returned to Berkeley as a full professor in 1974 and began to study reaction dynamics, investigations of various primary photochemical processes, and the spectroscopy of ionic and molecular clusters. In 1994 he retired as professor and principal investigator for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to become president of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. In 2006 he became president emeritus and distinguished research fellow at the same institution.

Lee has received numerous awards and honors, including the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the U.S. National Medal of Science, Faraday Medal and Prize from the Royal Chemical Society of Great Britain, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Medal from the Indian National Science Academy. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Göttingen Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences, Korean Academy of Science and Technology, and Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is also a member of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the Third World Academy of Sciences. He has received honorary degrees from 34 universities around the world.

Jerry M. Sudarsky

In 1946 Sudarsky founded his first company, Pacific Yeast Products, later named Bioferm Corporation, one of the first biotech companies in the world. Bioferm pioneered the production of vitamin B₁₂ and created and marketed the first bio-insecticide products. Sudarsky sold the company in 1960 and joined the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), a United Nations agency dedicated to helping underdeveloped nations develop and improve their industrial base. Working for UNIDO, he helped found Israel Chemicals and served as its chairman from 1968 to 1972. He later served as vice chairman for Daylin, Inc., and Jacobs Engineering Group.

In 1994, using his extensive experience in the design, engineering, construction, and operations of commercial properties, Sudarsky created Health Science Properties, now known as Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a company that provides laboratory space to the biotech industry. Three years after its inception, Alexandria went public on the New York Stock Exchange with fewer than 10 employees.

Sudarsky and his wife, Milly, have supported many worthy causes and institutions, including the Sudarsky Biochemical Building and the Sudarsky Center for Computational Biology at Hebrew University.

Haldor Topsøe
The Chemists' Club's Winthrop-Sears Medal

Haldor Topsøe's deep conviction that technology, applied engineering, good scientific research, and focused process and product development are the essential means for enhancing opportunities for the world to conquer hunger, malnutrition, and disease is the driving force behind the accomplishments of this world-class engineer.

Topsøe graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the Technical University of Copenhagen and began his career with Aarhus Oliefabrik A/S. In 1940 he established the Haldor Topsøe Company, devoted to the development of catalysts and their use in commercial processes.

Topsøe has applied his knowledge of catalysis, fertilizers, and energy to issues related to overpopulation, scarcity of resources, environmental protection, and capital transfer. He has participated in industrial and advisory collaborations with leaders all over the world to address these problems and has established transfer technology projects in Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, as well as countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Topsøe helped establish the Danish Nuclear Research Station after World War II and served as a member of the board; he also participated in the first International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva. He was involved in the creation of Denmark's Board for Technical Scientific Research and is an active member of the Danish Engineering Society, the Danish Academy for Technical Sciences, as well as the United States National Academy of Engineering, the Swedish Academy for Technical Sciences, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

For his business and philanthropic successes, Topsøe has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Knight of Dannebrog, G. A. Hagemann Medal, the C. F. Tietgen Medal, and the Queen's Medal for Meritorious Service. He has also received honorary degrees from Aarhus University, Technical Institute of Copenhagen, and Chalmers University, Sweden.

Paul Berg
Walter Gilbert
AIC Gold Medal

Paul Berg
A pioneer in genetic engineering, Paul Berg was the first investigator to construct a recombinant DNA molecule, that is, a molecule containing parts of DNA from different species. Further, the types of thinking that he brought to molecular biology were central to the development of the whole recombinant DNA capability.

Berg received a B.S. from the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University. After serving on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, he went to Stanford University in 1959, where he chaired the Department of Biochemistry from 1969 to 1974 and served as director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine from 1985 to 2000. He also served as a director of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 2004.

Berg is one of the principal pioneers in gene splicing, having developed the recombinant DNA technology and methods to map the structure and function of DNA. For these achievements, he was awarded the Lasker Basic Science Award, the Annual Award of the Gairdner Foundation, the National Medal of Science, and the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In addition, Berg is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, French Academy of Science, and the Royal Society (London). He has received honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Rochester, Oregon State University, Washington University, Case Western Reserve University, and the Pennsylvania State University.

Berg has served on the boards of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the Whitehead Institute and on the International Advisory Board of the Basel Institute of Immunology. He has chaired the Public Policy Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology and the Board of the National Foundation for Biomedical Research. He currently serves on the Committee on Scientific Communication and National Security for the National Academies. He is founder and principal scientific advisor of Schering-Plough's DNAX Research Institute, a director of Affymetrix and of Gilead Sciences, and a scientific advisor to Burrill & Company and to Perlagen Sciences.





Walter Gilbert
During his extraordinary career in molecular biology, Walter Gilbert has worked on the mechanism of protein synthesis, isolated the first genetic repressor, invented the rolling circle model of DNA replication, first expressed proinsulin in bacteria, and developed the argument that genes were created through the process of exon shuffling.

Gilbert received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Cambridge University and both an M.A. in physics and a B.A. in chemistry from Harvard University. He began his teaching a research career at Harvard as a physicist but within a few years became fascinated with DNA, largely as a result of a growing friendship with James Watson, whom he met while at Cambridge. By 1964 Gilbert was officially tenured as a biophysicist at Harvard, working with Watson and others to discover messenger RNA, the transient intermediary molecule formed as a copy of DNA and involved in protein synthesis. Also in the 1960s Gilbert contributed to discoveries of molecules associated with the lac operon and furthered the understanding of DNA synthesis. He has held professorships in the departments of physics, biophysics, biochemistry, biology, and, since 1985, in molecular and cellular biology. He is currently the Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus.

In 1980 Gilbert shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his codevelopment of a method for determining the sequence of nucleotide links in the chainlike molecules of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). He developed the technique of using gel electrophoresis to decipher the order of the nucleotide sequences of DNA segments; his DNA-sequencing techniques revolutionized molecular biology, becoming fundamental in the study of DNA and making possible the human genome project.

Gilbert has been involved in a number of successful commercial ventures, including cofounding Biogen, Myriad Genetics, Memory Pharmaceuticals, and Paratek Pharmaceuticals. Since 2001 he has been a managing partner in BioVentures Investors. Gilbert serves on the Scientific Governors Board of the Scripps Research Institute, and he received the Institute of American Entrepreneurs "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 1991.