Canadian Scientist Sidney Altman

Background Information: Born in Montreal, 1939 Mom worked in textile mill and father worked in grocery store He was inspired by them hard work will eventually be rewarded Schooling was not preferred in their family through generations The atom bomb and a book about the period table of elements, made him interested in science When he was growing up, Einstein was a role model to him Fathers grocery store had eventually profited enough to comfort their family Sid was able to choose the post-secondary path of his choice He was first to go to McGill University, but due to an unknown reason, he ended up going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology During final year of MIT, he took molecular biology Spent 18 months, as graduate student in Physics at Figure 1 - Sidney Altman Columbia University waiting for laboratory work and just for fun, he enrolled in biophysics He worked with the effects of the replication of bacteriophage 2 years later, he became a member of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England At MRC laboratory, his work led to the discovery of the RNase P and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme The discovery got him a job at Yale University as a professor in 1971 Became Chairman and then Dean of Yale College and then returned to becoming a professor Married to Ann Korner in 1972 Had 2 children: Daniel in 1974 and Leah in 1977 o (Sidney Altman - Autobiography, 2013) Honours: The discovery of the catalytic RNA was rewarded with a Nobel prize in Chemistry, 1989 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, 1990 Honorary Degrees: o Universit de Montral 1990 Contact Information: o York University (Toronto) 1990 E-mail: sidney.altman@yale.edu o Connecticut College 1990 Website: http://www.biology.yale.edu/facu o McGill University 1991 ltystaff/altman.html o University of Colorado 1991 o University of British Columbia 1991 o Dartmouth College 1996 (Sidney Altman, Faculty: Yale Department of Chemistry, 2013) Current Research Functions and structure of ribonucleous P in bacteria and human cells Research properties of enzymes in vivo Use of RNase to activate different genes in bacteria and mammal cells o (Sidney Altman, Faculty: Yale Department of Chemistry, 2013)