Elizabeth H. Blackburn PhD

Professor Elizabeth H. Blackburn is a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research. She discovered the molecular nature of telomeres – the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving the genetic information – and co-discovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme telomerase. Born in Australia, she earned her B.Sc. (1970) and M.Sc. (1972) degrees from the University of Melbourne, received her Ph.D. (1975) from the University of Cambridge, and did postdoctoral work in molecular and cellular biology at Yale University (1975–1977). She was a faculty member at the University of California Berkeley from 1978 until 1990, when she joined the faculty at the University of California San Francisco, where she is currently Morris Herzstein Professor of Biology and Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute. She has won many prestigious awards throughout her career. She was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991) and the Royal Society of London (1992). She was elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1993) and Member of the Institute of Medicine (2000). She served on the President’s Council on Bioethics (2002–2004) and has been awarded honorary degrees by 11 universities. She received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2006, and in 2007 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. In 2008 she was the North American laureate for the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards. In 2009, Professor Blackburn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.