TABLE OF CONTENTS FRONT PAGE NEXT ARTICLE PREVIOUS ARTICLE
Oliver Smithies, excellence professor of pathology at the School of Medicine,
has been elected a member of the Royal Society of London, the United Kingdom's
equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
No more than six foreign members are elected annually "from among persons of
the greatest eminence for their scientific discoveries and attainment,"
according to the society. Founded in 1660, the independent organization
promotes natural and applied sciences.
A member of the University's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Smithies
was recognized for boosting knowledge of genes and genetic engineering and
applying that knowledge in altering genes in useful ways. For example, using
gene targeting, a technique he pioneered, he and colleagues have developed mice
with mutations that model human genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and
hardening of the arteries. Thousands of other researchers around the world have
adopted his technique.
Now, the scientist is studying high blood pressure--a major human problem--by
using genetically altered mice.
Smithies joined the pathology and laboratory medicine faculty in 1988 after
working at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he held the Hilldale
professorship, one of the most prestigious at Wisconsin.
He has earned many international, national and state awards, including two
Gairdner awards, the Alfred P. Sloan Award of the General Motors Foundation,
the Ciba Award of the American Heart Association, the Bristol Myers Squibb
Award for cardiovascular and metabolic disease research and a North Carolina
Award in Science.
To UNC-CH Home Page