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Columbia Awards Horwitz Prizes
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Columbia University awarded the 2008 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Ulrich Hartl, MD, and Arthur Horwich, MD, for work that helped elucidate how proteins fold into their final shapes and how mistakes in folding can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Before their breakthrough, it was thought that proteins, which initially resemble a line of beads on a string, spontaneously fold themselves into their final three-dimensional structures. Drs. Hartl and Horwich discovered, however, that proteins need assistance to ensure they fold into the proper shape. When the protein-folding pathway is imperfect, the researchers discovered, proteins can accumulate in cells and lead to disease.
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| F. Ulrich Hartl (left) and Arthur Horwich with their citations. Rosalind Franklin Jekowsky (center) accepted an honorary Horwitz prize on behalf of her aunt, Rosalind Franklin. |
The Horwitz prize was established by Columbia University in 1967 to recognize outstanding contributions to basic research in the fields of biology and biochemistry. Dr. Hartl, professor and director of biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany, and Dr. Horwich, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Genetics, professor of pediatrics, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Yale, received their prizes at a dinner in November.
An honorary 2008 Horwitz Prize was awarded posthumously to Rosalind Franklin, PhD, for her seminal contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Using X-ray crystallography, Dr. Franklin obtained the data that Nobel laureates James Watson and Francis Crick used to develop the double helix model of DNA. Physiology chair Andrew Marks, MD, a member of the selection committee, said: “Rosalind Franklin’s scientific contributions were achieved despite social barriers, many of which persist to this day. In awarding the prize to Dr. Franklin we say to the world that the doors of science are open to those committed to a life of discovery, regardless of gender, color, religion or nationality, and that in this time and place, it is the force of one’s ideas that matter.”
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Stem Cell Initiative
