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Prof. Tom Rapoport, Preisträger der Max-Delbrück-Medaille
2005
Photo: Harvard Medical School
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"A cell is like a factory: one of its most
important jobs is to produce proteins. But in cellular factories, the
sorting task is complicated by the fact that proteins are used by the
cell itself as well as delivered to outside "customers", Professor
Rapoport said in his lecture following the award ceremony. He was able
to demonstrate that a channel located within the cell membrane plays a
crucial role in this process. This channel not only carries some
proteins through the membrane, but also stores others. For several
years, Professor Rapoport has been studying how the characteristic
form of an organelle develops and, in particular, the tube system
which extends throughout the entire cell and is necessary for the
transport of proteins.
Tom Rapoport was born on June 17, 1947 in Cincinnati, USA. His parents
had fled Nazi-Germany. In the fifties, his family returned to Europe
and eventually went to East Berlin. Following high school, Professor
Rapoport studied chemistry and biochemistry at Humboldt University in
Berlin and earned his PhD in 1972. He then became an investigator at
the Central Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in
Berlin-Buch. In 1982, he worked for a few months in the laboratory of
Günter Blobel at Rockefeller University, New York, USA, who in 1999
received the Nobel Prize. In 1985, Tom Rapoport became Professor for
Cell Biology and research group leader at the Central Institute in
Berlin-Buch, which, after German reunification, became the Max
Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch in 1992. Tom
Rapoport became research group leader at the MDC and in January 1995
he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he
was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator
in 1997.
Professor Rapoport has received many honours and is a member of
several prestigious organizations including the German Academy of
Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the European Molecular Biology
Organization (EMBO), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and
the National Academy of Science. In addition, he is an External
Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical
Chemistry in Göttingen. Professor Rapoport has been awarded the
Johannes Müller Prize for Experimental Medicine, the Rudolf-Virchow
Prize, and the Otto Warburg Medal of the Society for Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology.
Begun in 1992, the Max Delbrück Medal is given annually to an
outstanding scientist and is awarded at the "Berlin Lectures on
Molecular Medicine". The "Berlin Lectures" are organized by the MDC,
the three Universities in Berlin, biomedical research institutions,
and the Schering Forschungsgesellschaft (Research Foundation). The MDC
is a national research laboratory of the Helmholtz Association of
German Research Centres and named after the Nobel Prize Winner Max
Delbrück, a Berlin born physicist and biologist (September 4, 1906
Berlin - March 10, 1981 Pasadena/USA).
Recipients of the Max Delbrück Medal
2005 Professor Tom Rapoport, Harvard Medical School, Boston/USA
2004 Professor Victor J. Dzau, Duke Universität, Durham (USA)
2003 Professor Ronald D. G. McKay, National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Bethesda, USA
2002 Professor Roger Y. Tsien, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
and University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA
2001 Professor Eric S. Lander, Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, USA
2000 Professor Joan Argetsinger Steitz, Yale Universität, New Haven,
USA)
1999 Professor Paul Berg, Stanford Universität, USA (Nobel Prize in
Chemistry, 1980)
1998 Professor Svante Pääbo, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
1997 Professor Charles Weissmann, University of Zurich, Switzerland
1996 Professor Robert A. Weinberg, Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, USA
1995 Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux, Pasteur-Institut, Paris,
Frankreich
1994 Professor Sydney Brenner, Universität Cambridge, Großbritannien
(Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2002)
1993 cancelled
1992 Professor Günter Blobel, Rockefeller Universität New York, USA
(Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1999)
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