Alfred Goodman Gilman, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1994

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_G._Gilman

Alfred Goodman Gilman (born July 1, 1941) is an American pharmacologist and biochemist. He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Martin Rodbell for their discoveries regarding G-proteins.

G-proteins are a vital intermediary between the extracellular activation of receptors (GPCR) on the cell membrane and actions within the cell. Rodbell had shown in the 1960s that GTP was involved in cell signaling. It was Gilman who actually discovered the proteins that interacted with the GTP to initiate signalling cascades within the cell.

Gilman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His parents were Mabel (Schmidt) and Alfred Gilman, a professor at Yale University and one of the authors of the classic pharmacology textbook The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics; he chose his son's middle name in honor of his co-author Louis S. Goodman. Alfred Goodman Gilman was contributing editor of the tenth (2001) edition of the textbook.[1]

Education[edit] Gilman graduated from Yale with his B.S. in 1962. He then entered a combined MD/PhD program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio where he wanted to study under Nobel laureate pharmacologist Earl Sutherland. Sutherland was departing for Vanderbilt University, so Gilman studied under Sutherland's young collaborator, Theodore Rall. Gilman graduated from Case Western in 1969, then did his post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health with Nobel laurate Marshall Nirenberg from 1969 until 1971.

Professional History[edit] In 1971, Gilman became a professor of pharmacology at the University of Virginia, School of Medicine, in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1981, he became chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize in 1994, he won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research as well as the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1989 together with Edwin Krebs. In 2005, he was elected as Dean of University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas. He also serves on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government.