Susumu Tonegawa
Susumu Tonegawa
Susumu Tonegawais a Japanese scientist who was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987, for his discovery of the genetic mechanism that produces antibody diversity. Although he won the Nobel Prize for his work in immunology, Tonegawa is a molecular biologist by training and he again changed fields following his Nobel Prize win; he now studies neuroscience, examining the molecular, cellular and neuronal basis of memory formation and retrieval...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth6 September 1939
CountryJapan
I see myself as a scientist who is interested in what's going on inside of us.
Independent of what is happening around you in the outside world, humans constantly have internal activity in the brain.
After I arrived in Basel, I initially attempted to continue the project of my days in Dulbecco's laboratory, namely, the transcriptional control of the simian virus 40 genes.
I decided to pursue graduate study in molecular biology and was accepted by Professor Itaru Watanabe's laboratory at the Institute for Virus Research at the University of Kyoto, one of a few laboratories in Japan where U.S.-trained molecular biologists were actively engaged in research.
When General Motors builds a car, they want to meet the specific needs of many customers. But if they custom-make each car, then it will not be economical.