GILBERT, WALTER

GILBERT, WALTER (1932– ), U.S. molecular biologist and Nobel laureate. Gilbert was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard University (B.A. 1953, M.A. 1954) and received his doctorate from Cambridge University in mathematics in 1957. Appointed assistant professor of physics at Harvard from 1959 to 1964, he was an associate professor in biophysics from 1964 to 1969 and professor of molecular biology from 1969 to 1972; during that period he was an American Cancer Society professor. He left Harvard in 1981 to become CEO of Biogen, N.V. Returning to Harvard (1985–2002), he was the Carl M. Loeb University Professor. As emeritus, he was a managing partner of Bioventures Investors in 2005, a venture capital fund investing in biotechnology. He has founded many biotechnology companies. Among them are Biogen, Myriad Genetics, Memory Pharmaceuticals, and Paratek Pharmaceuticals. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physics Society, and the American Society of Biological Chemistry. He is an overseer of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and on the collections committee of the Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard. Gilbert's research has been in the fields of biophysics, genetic control mechanism, and protein DNA interaction. He worked extensively in the field of the early evolution of genes. He is the recipient of many awards, culminating in the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1980, along with Frederick Sanger and paul berg . Gilbert is married to Celia Gilbert, poet and painter, who is the daughter of I.F. Stone .