Bruce Alberts

Bruce Michael Alberts
Born	April 14, 1938 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Biochemistry
Institutions	Harvard University University of Geneva Princeton University National Academy of Sciences UCSF Science (journal)
Alma mater	Harvard College (BSc) Harvard University (PhD)
Thesis	Characterization of Naturally Occurring, Cross-Linked Fraction of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (1966)
Doctoral advisor	Paul Doty
Known for	Co-author of Molecular Biology of the Cell
Notable awards	Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2005) Vannevar Bush Award (2010)
Website
biochemistry.ucsf.edu/labs/alberts

Bruce Michael Alberts (born 1938) is an American biochemist known for his work in science public policy and as an original author of Molecular Biology of the Cell. Alberts, noted particularly for his study of the protein complexes which enable chromosome replication when living cells divide, is Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine and United States Science Envoy to Pakistan and Indonesia. Alberts was the president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005 and a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Education

After graduating from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, Alberts attended and graduated from Harvard College, with a degree in biochemical sciences, and earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1965.

Career

After graduating, Alberts 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. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. 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 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. In March 2008, 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.

From 2000-2009, Alberts was the Co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, an advisory institution in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of fifteen science academies from around the world, and a member of the Science Initiative Group board.

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

Political work

In his June 4, 2009 speech at Cairo University, US President Barack Obama announced a new Science Envoy program as part of a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." In January 2010, Bruce Alberts, Ahmed Zewail, and Elias Zerhouni became the first US science envoys to Islam, visiting Muslim-majority countries from North Africa to Southeast Asia.

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 fifth edition, is the standard cell biology textbook in most universities; the fourth edition is freely available from National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf. This book and its counterpart for undergraduate students, Essential Cell Biology, have been translated into several languages.

Preceded by Mary Beckerle

ASCB Presidents 2007

Succeeded by Robert D. Goldman

Further reading

• Beardsley, Tim (February 1994). "Profile: Laid-Back Leader Rattles the Academy". Scientific American 270 (2): 18–19. 

External links

• Bruce Alberts iBioMagazine: "Learning from failure"