Bruce Alberts

Education After graduating from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, Alberts attended Harvard College, as a pre-medicine major. and Alberts decided to continue on in biophysics. After failing his first oral examination in spring 1965, he completed his Ph.D. research in fall 1965. His doctorate in biophysics was finally awarded by Harvard University in 1966. Alberts credits his initial failure with teaching him much more than his successes.

In 1966, Alberts joined the department of biochemical sciences at Princeton University as an assistant professor. In 1971, he became an associate professor and in 1973 a full professor, holding the Damon Pfeiffer Professorship in life sciences from 1975 to 1976. At Princeton, he continued to work in the area of protein biochemistry, eventually reconstituting a DNA replication system in a test tube from seven purified proteins.

Alberts was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. From 1981 to 1985 Alberts held an American Cancer Society Research Professorship, a title granted for life as of 1980.

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 in different capacities on a number of advisory and editorial boards, including as chair of the Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council.

He served as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 2000 to 2009, and have created the Rescuing Biomedical Research organization, to "collect and organize input for solutions" to the problems identified by themselves

Alberts was editor-in-chief of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's flagship publication, Science for five years from 2008 to 2013. He is one of the founding editors of the journal Cell Biology Education.

International work From 2000 to 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. This organization has since been renamed the InterAcademy Panel for Policy, and it is now located in Trieste.

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 seventh 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 multiple languages.

Awards and honours Alberts is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2014, Alberts was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama. 1997, Outstanding Educator Award, from The Exploratorium in San Francisco 2010, Vannevar Bush Award 2010, George Brown Award for International Scientific Cooperation 2014, National Medal of Science 2014, Centennial Medal, Harvard University 2016, Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science 2022, Sigma Xi Gold Key Award