Author Biography
James D. Watson is Chancellor Emeritus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was previously its Director from 1968 to 1993, President from 1994 to 2003, and Chancellor from 2003 to 2007. He spent his undergraduate years at the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. in 1950 from Indiana University. Between 1950 and 1953, he did postdoctoral research in Copenhagen and Cambridge, England. While at Cambridge, he began the collaboration that resulted in the elucidation of the double-helical structure of DNA in 1953. (For this discovery, Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.) Later in 1953, he went to the California Institute of Technology. He moved to Harvard in 1955, where he taught and did research on RNA synthesis and protein synthesis until 1976. He was the first Director of the National Center for Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health from 1989 to 1992. Dr. Watson was sole author of the first, second, and third editions of Molecular Biology of the Gene, and a co-author of the fourth, fifth and sixth editions. These were published in 1965, 1970, 1976, 1987, 2003, and 2007, respectively. He is also a co-author of two other textbooks: Molecular Biology of the Cell and Recombinant DNA, as well as author of the celebrated 1968 memoir, The Double Helix, which in 2012 was listed by the Library Of Congress as one of the 88 books that shaped America.Tania A. Baker is the Head of the Department and Whitehead Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She received a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University in 1988. Her graduate research was carried out in the laboratory of Professor Arthur Kornberg and focused on mechanisms of initiation of DNA replication. She did postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Kiyoshi Mizuuchi at the National Institutes of Health, studying the mechanism and regulation of DNA transposition. Her current research explores mechanisms and regulation of genetic recombination, enzyme-catalyzed protein unfolding, and ATP-dependent protein degradation. Professor Baker received the 2001 Eli Lilly Research Award from the American Society of Microbiology and the 2000 MIT School of Science Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2004 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. She is co-author (with Arthur Kornberg) of the book DNA Replication, Second Edition.Stephen P. Bell is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received B.A. degrees from the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology and the Integrated Sciences Program at Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1991. His graduate research was carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Tjian and focused on eukaryotic transcription. He did postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Bruce Stillman at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, working on the initiation of eukaryotic DNA replication. His current research focuses on the mechanisms controlling the duplication of eukaryotic chromosomes. Professor Bell received the 2001 ASBMB-Schering Plough Scientific Achievement Award, the 1998 Everett Moore Baker Memorial Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at MIT and the 2006 MIT School of Science Teaching Award.Alexander A.F. Gann is the Lita Annenberg Hazen Dean and Professor in the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He is also a Senior Editor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. He received his B.Sc in microbiology from University College London and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from The University of Edinburgh in 1989. His graduate res
