E. Meyerowitz: Biography

USA - USA/Canada

Elliot Meyerowitz and Christopher Somerville

2006 Balzan Prize for Plant Molecular Genetics

For their joint efforts in establishing Arabidopsis as a model organism for plant molecular genetics. This has far reaching implications for plant science at both the fundamental level and in potential applications.

Biographical data

ELLIOT MEYEROWITZ, born in Washington, D.C. on 22 May 1951, is a U.S. citizen.

He is currently George W. Beadle Professor of Biology and Chair at the California Institute of Technology, Division of Biology.

Meyerowitz received his A.B. in Biology from Columbia University, New York (1973), his M.Phil. in Biology from Yale University, New Haven (1975), and his Ph.D. in Biology from Yale University (1977). From 1977 to 1979, he was Post-doctoral Fellow of the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund at the Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Assistant Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology from 1980 to 1985. He has also been Associate Professor of Biology (1985-1989) and Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology. (1995-2000).

Since 1990, he has been a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science since 1991, of the National Academy of Sciences since 1995 and of the American Philosophical Society since 1998. In 2002, he became Foreign Associate of the Académie des Sciences de France and, in 2004, Foreign Member of the Royal Society in Great Britain.

Among his prizes and awards, the following can be mentioned: the Huebschman Prize in Biology (Columbia University, 1972), the John S. Nicholas Award for Outstanding Biology Dissertation (Yale University, 1977), the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (California Institute of Technology, 1981), the Pelton Award (1994), the Gibbs Medal of the American Society of Plant Physiologists (1995), the Science pour l’Art-Science Prize of Möet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton and the Genetics Society of America Medal (1996), the Mendel Medal of the Genetical Society of Great Britain and the International Prize for Biology of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1997), the Richard Lounsbery Award of the National Academy of Science (1999), the Wilbur Cross Medal (Yale University, 2001) and the Ross Harrison Prize (2005).

(November 2006)