RODBELL, MARTIN

RODBELL, MARTIN (1925–1998), U.S. biochemist and Nobel laureate. Rodbell was born in Baltimore and received his B.A. at Johns Hopkins University (1949) after his studies were interrupted by Navy service in World War II, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle (1954). His first postdoctoral appointment was in the department of chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana. After research in Brussels and Leiden, Rodbell worked at the National Institutes of Health until 1985, apart from a period as professor at the University of Geneva (1981–83). In 1985 he was appointed scientific director of the National Institute of Environmental Health. His main research interest concerned transduction, the process by which cell membrane receptor binding by hormones and other stimuli is converted into an appropriate cell response. He received the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology in 1994 (jointly with Alfred gilman ) for delineating the contribution of guanine nucleotides (GTP) and magnesium ions to cell signaling. Rodbell had broad scientific and cultural interests, increased by his European connections. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)