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DFW
Nobel Laureates
Dallas/Fort
Worth claims five of the eleven Texas Nobel Prize
winners, the largest such gathering in the state. All five DFW Laureates
are associated with the University of Texas (UT) System: three with
UT Southwestern Medical Center and two with UT Dallas.
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Michael Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein, Physiology
or Medicine (1985) Brown and Goldstein were jointly awarded a Nobel
Prize for their discoveries concerning "the regulation of cholesterol
metabolism. "Brown and Goldstein discovered the basic
mechanism of cholesterol metabolism that led to the development
of today's cholesterol-lowering drugs, which are saving lives.
Johann Deisenhofer, Chemistry (1988) Deisenhofer
received the Nobel Prize along with Robert Huber,
Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemist, Martinsried, Germany, and
Hartmut Michel, Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysics, Frankfurt/Main,
Germany for the determination of the three-dimensional structure
of a photosynthetic reaction center. Deisenhofer's work is considered
a milestone in structural biology. His research using X-ray crystallography
reveal in three-dimensional detail the structure of protein in the
membrane of cells, atom by atom. Understanding detailed structure
makes possible the development of new drugs.
Alfred G. Gilman,
Physiology or Medicine (1994) The Nobel Prize was awarded jointly
to Gilman and Martin Rodbell of the National Institutes of Health
in Bethesda, Maryland. Gilman's discovery of G proteins is leading
to the development of drugs that precisely target cellular malfunctions.
Alan G. MacDiarmid, Chemistry (2001) The
Nobel Prize was awarded jointly to MacDiarmid, Alan J. Heeger, University
of California at Santa Barbara, and Hideki Shirakawa, University
of Tsukuba, Japan for the discovery that plastic can, after certain
modifications, be made electrically conductive.
Dr. Russell A. Hulse, Physics (1993) Visiting
UT Dallas from Princeton University, The Nobel Prize was awarded
jointly to Hulse and Joseph Taylor Jr., also of Princeton University.
The physics prize was in recognition of the 1974 discovery of the
first binary pulsar - a twin star system that provides a rare natural
laboratory. The system test albert Einstein's prediction that moving
objects emit gravitational waves, as well as other aspects of his
general theory of relativity.
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