Timothy John MitchisonFRS is acell biologist andsystems biologist andHasib Sabbagh Professor of Systems Biology atHarvard Medical School in the United States.^[6][7][8] He is known for his discovery, withMarc Kirschner, of dynamic instability in microtubules,^[9][10] for studies of the mechanism of cell division, and for contributions tochemical biology.^[11]

Mitchison was educated atHaberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and completed his Bachelor of Arts degree inBiochemistry at theUniversity of Oxford where he was an undergraduate student ofMerton College, Oxford, from 1976 to 1979. He moved to theUniversity of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1979 for his PhD which was supervised byMarc Kirschner^[12] and investigated the dynamic instability ofmicrotubules.^[12][13]

Mitchison returned to the UK forpostdoctoral research at theNational Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London.^[when?] In 1988 he returned to San Francisco where he was appointed assistant professor at UCSF.^[14] In 1994 he wrote an opinion piece for the journalChemistry & Biology titled "Towards a pharmacological genetics" which helped to launch the field ofchemical genetics.^[11] In 1997 he moved toHarvard University to become co-director of the Institute for Chemistry and Cell Biology atHarvard Medical School,^[14] where he pioneered phenotype-based screening,^[15] discovering the small moleculemonastrol – the first small-molecule inhibitor ofmitosis that does not targettubulin.Monastrol was shown to inhibitkinesin-5, a motor protein. In 2003 he became Deputy Chair of the newly formed Department of Systems Biology, chaired byMarc Kirschner.^[16][17] He works on aspects of mesoscale biology^[18] including the self-organization of the cytoskeleton^[19][20] and of cytoplasm.^[21][22] He collaborates extensively withChristine Field on the mechanism ofcytokinesis.^[23][24][25]

Mitchison was electedFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1997 for “substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge”^[26] and served as president of theAmerican Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in 2010.^[27] He was elected a member of theNational Academy of Sciences of the United States in 2014^[14] and delivered theKeith R. Porter Lecture in 2013.

Mitchison is married to scientistChristine M. Field with whom he has two children.^[7] Mitchison comes from a family of distinguished biologists; his father isAvrion Mitchison,^[6] his uncles areDenis Mitchison^{[citation needed]} andMurdoch Mitchison,^[6] his great uncle wasJ.B.S. Haldane^[6] and his great-grandfatherJohn Scott Haldane. His grandparents were the politicianDick Mitchison^[28] and the writerNaomi Mitchison (née Haldane).^[28] His younger sister Hannah M. Mitchison is also a biologist.^[29]

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• 1958 births
• Living people
• 20th-century British biologists
• 21st-century British biologists
• Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
• People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Harvard University faculty
• Systems biologists
• University of California, San Francisco alumni
• University of California, San Francisco faculty
• Haldane family
• Mitchison family
• British biochemists

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