Herbert Boyer | |
|---|---|
 Dr. Boyer in 1977 | |
| Born | (1936-07-10)July 10, 1936 (age 89) Derry, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Education | Saint Vincent College(B.S., 1958) University of Pittsburgh(Ph.D. 1963) |
| Awards | National Medal of Science (1990) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biology |
Herbert Wayne "Herb"Boyer (born July 10, 1936) is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along withStanley N. Cohen andPaul Berg, he discoveredrecombinant DNA, a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, which aided in jump-starting the field ofgenetic engineering. By 1969, he had performed studies on a couple of restriction enzymes ofE. coli with especially useful properties.
He is recipient of the 1990National Medal of Science, co-recipient of the 1996Lemelson–MIT Prize, and a co-founder ofGenentech. He was professor at theUniversity of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and later served as vice president of Genentech from 1976 until his retirement in 1991.[1]
Herbert Boyer was born in 1936 inDerry, Pennsylvania. He received hisbachelor's degree in biology and chemistry fromSaint Vincent College inLatrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1958. He married his wife Grace the following year. He received hisPhD at theUniversity of Pittsburgh in 1963 and participated as an activist in thecivil rights movement.[citation needed]
Boyer spent three years in postdoctoral work atYale University in the laboratories of Professors Edward Adelberg and Bruce Carlton, and then became an assistant professor at theUniversity of California, San Francisco and a professor of biochemistry from 1976 to 1991, where he discovered that genes from bacteria could becombined with genes fromeukaryotes. In 1977, Boyer's laboratory and collaboratorsKeiichi Itakura andArthur Riggs atCity of Hope National Medical Center described the first-ever synthesis and expression of a peptide-coding gene.[2] In August 1978, he produced syntheticinsulin using his new transgenicgenetically modified bacteria, followed in 1979 by agrowth hormone.
In 1976, Boyer foundedGenentech withventure capitalistRobert A. Swanson. Genentech's approach to the first synthesis ofinsulin won out overWalter Gilbert's approach atBiogen which used wholegenes from natural sources. Boyer built his gene from its individualnucleotides.[citation needed]
In 1990, Boyer and his wife Grace gave the single largest donation ($10,000,000) bestowed on theYale School of Medicine by an individual. The Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine was named after the Boyer family in 1991.[3][4]
At the Class of 2007 Commencement, St. Vincent College announced that they had renamed the School of Natural Science, Mathematics, and Computing the Herbert W. Boyer School.[5]
Among his professional activities, Boyer is on the board of directors ofScripps Research.[6]
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