Immigrant of the Day: Oliver Smithies (UK)

Oliver Smithies (born July 23, 1925) is a geneticist and Nobel laureate, credited with the invention of gel electrophoresis in 1950, and the simultaneous discovery with Mario Capecchi of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA.

Smithies was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England.  He studied Physiology for a BA First class and earned a second bachelor’s degree in chemistry; he also received a MA and a DPhil in Biochemistry at Balliol College, Oxford.  Smithies dropped out of medical school to study chemistry.

From 1953 to 1960, Smithies worked in the Connaught Medical Research Laboratory, University of Toronto, Canada, due to visa problems, before he could return to his originally planned post at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he worked from 1960 to 1988.

Since 1988, Smithies has been designated an Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Smithies also works at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.

Smithies’ work has advanced research in cystic fibrosis and could possibly have applications in other human diseases. Along with gel electrophoresis, he developed gene targeting, a method of creating mice with more human-like characteristics for use in research. Smithies and Mario Capecchi both came to the same discoveries regarding gene targeting independently. Smithies developed the technique while at the University of Wisconsin. In 2002, Smithies worked along with his wife, Dr. Nobuyo Maeda, studying high blood pressure using genetically altered mice.  As of 1995, he still worked in his lab seven days a week.

On October 8, 2007, Smithies was announced as co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah (previously honored as Immigrant of the Day ) and Martin Evans of Cardiff University “for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.” Smithies is the first full professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to receive a Nobel Prize.

For a news story about how the success of Capecchi and Smithies shows why the United States must get its immigration policy right, click here.

KJ