George Wald | |
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 George Wald in 1987 | |
| Born | George Wald (1906-11-18)November 18, 1906 |
| Died | April 12, 1997(1997-04-12) (aged 90) Cambridge,Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Alma mater | New York University Columbia University |
| Known for | Pigments in theretina Vertebrate visual opsin Wald's visual cycle |
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| Children | 4 |
| Awards | Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry(1939) Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research(1953) Rumford Prize(1959) Guggenheim Fellowship(1963) Frederic Ives Medal(1966) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine(1967) Massey Lecture(1970) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neurobiology |
| Institutions | Harvard University University of Chicago |
George Wald (November 18, 1906 – April 12, 1997) was an American scientist and activist who studiedpigments in theretina. He won a share of the 1967Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine withHaldan Keffer Hartline andRagnar Granit.[1]
In 1970, Wald predicted that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”[2][3][4]
George Wald was born inNew York City, the son of Ernestine (Rosenmann) and Isaac Wald,Jewish immigrant parents. He was a member of the first graduating class of theBrooklyn Technical High School in New York in 1923. He received his Bachelor of Science degree fromNew York University in 1927 and his PhD inzoology fromColumbia University in 1932. After graduating, he received a travel grant from the US National Research Council. Wald used this grant to work in Germany withOtto Heinrich Warburg where he identifiedvitamin A in the retina. Wald then went on to work inZürich, Switzerland, with the discoverer of vitamin A,Paul Karrer. Wald then worked briefly withOtto Fritz Meyerhof inHeidelberg, Germany, but left Europe for theUniversity of Chicago in 1933 whenAdolf Hitler came to power and life in Europe became more dangerous for Jews. In 1934, Wald went toHarvard University where he became an instructor, then a professor.
Wald was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.[5] He was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 1950, theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1958,[6] and in 1967 was awarded theNobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries in vision. In 1966 he was awarded theFrederic Ives Medal by theOSA and in 1967 thePaul Karrer Gold Medal of theUniversity of Zurich.[7] In 1992, he was elected an Honorary Member of OSA.
Wald spoke out on many political and social issues and his fame as a Nobel laureate brought national and international attention to his views. He was apacifist and vocal opponent of theVietnam War and thenuclear arms race. Speaking at MIT in 1969 Wald said, "Our government has become preoccupied with death, with the business of killing and being killed."[8] In 1980, he served as part ofRamsey Clark's delegation toIran during theIran hostage crisis.
With a small number of other Nobel laureates, he was invited in 1986 to fly to Moscow to adviseMikhail Gorbachev on a number ofenvironmental questions. While there, he questioned Gorbachev about the arrest, detention and exile ofYelena Bonner and her husband, fellow Nobel laureateAndrei Sakharov (Peace prize, 1975). Wald reported that Gorbachev said he knew nothing about it. Bonner and Sakharov were released shortly thereafter, in December 1986.
A member of the Circumcision Resource Center in Boston, he was one of the first scientists committed against circumcision but his article "Circumcision", rejected byThe New York Times in 1975, was published in 2012 only by an English magazine.
Wald died inCambridge, Massachusetts. He was married twice: in 1931 to Frances Kingsley (1906–1980) and in 1958 to the biochemistRuth Hubbard. He had two sons with Kingsley—Michael and David; he and Hubbard had a son—musicologist and musicianElijah Wald—and a daughter, Deborah, a family law attorney. He was an atheist.[9][unreliable source?]
As a postdoctoral researcher, Wald discovered thatvitamin A was a component of the retina. His further experiments showed that when the pigmentrhodopsin was exposed to light, it yielded the proteinopsin and a compound containing vitamin A. This suggested that vitamin A was essential in retinal function.
In the 1950s, Wald and his colleagues used chemical methods to extract pigments from the retina. Then, using aspectrophotometer, they were able to measure the light absorbance of the pigments. Since the absorbance oflight by retina pigments corresponds to thewavelengths that best activatephotoreceptor cells, this experiment showed the wavelengths that the eye could best detect. However, sincerod cells make up most of the retina, what Wald and his colleagues were specifically measuring was the absorbance of rhodopsin, the main photopigment in rods. Later, with a technique calledmicrospectrophotometry, he was able to measure the absorbance directly from cells, rather than from an extract of the pigments. This allowed Wald to determine the absorbance of pigments in thecone cells.
Biologist George Wald dismissed anything besides physicalism with, "I will not believe that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible: spontaneous generation arising to evolution.
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Two of George Wald's speeches can be read on-line:
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