Jack W. Szostak
Jack W. Szostak
Jack William Szostak is a Canadian American biologist of Polish British descent, Nobel Prize laureate, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Szostak has made significant contributions to the field of genetics. His achievement helped scientists to map the location of genes in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His research findings in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project. He was awarded the 2009...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 November 1952
CountryCanada
I greatly enjoy reading the biographies of scientists, and when doing so I always hope to learn the secrets of their success. Alas, those secrets generally remain elusive.
I was born in London, England during the great fog of 1952, but survived the coal-fueled air pollution with no ill effects and after less than a year in England was carried to Canada by my parents.
The thing about the Nobel ceremony is that for a whole week, you get treated like a superstar. You get driven everywhere. You have minders who always make sure you get where you're going. And you always get into the back seat of the limo.
I remember in 1967, when there was that terrible fire on NASA's Apollo 1 rocket that killed three astronauts, my father made pure oxygen and we lit this tiny cup and burned it. Suddenly, we had an unbelievable jet and a fire. You just could see exactly what had happened.
I do not know why I have always been fascinated by science or why I have been driven by the intense desire to make some original contribution. And although I have had some degree of success as a scientist, it is hard to say precisely why.
Years ago R.N.A. was kind of a bit player in the cell. Now our picture's completely inverted, and we think R.N.A.'s really the important thing.
What do cells do when they see a broken piece of DNA? Cells don't like such breaks. They'll do pretty much anything they can to fix things up. If a chromosome is broken, the cells will repair the break using an intact chromosome.