Johns Hopkins Gazette: October 17, 1994


Hopkins Graduate Wins Nobel Prize

A member of the class of 1949 is the 22nd person with a Johns
Hopkins connection to win a Nobel Prize.
    Martin Rodbell, a Baltimore native who earned his
undergraduate degree in biology at the university, is also
the ninth Hopkins-connected Nobel laureate in medicine.
    Dr. Rodbell, 68, a retired scientist with the National
Institutes of Health, was chosen last week to share the 1994
prize with Alfred G. Gilman of the University of Texas. They
will split the prize--this year worth $930,000--and be
honored with this year's other Nobelists in Dec. 10
ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo.
    The researchers were honored for work in the 1970s
deciphering the communications system the human body uses to
regulate cellular activity. Their work focused on G proteins,
the substances on cell surfaces that serve as intermediaries
between outside signals, transmitted by hormones or drugs,
and the cellular proteins that respond to those signals.
    Dr. Rodbell is the third Hopkins graduate to win a Nobel
in the 1990s, following two University of Chicago economists,
Merton Miller Ph.D.'52, who won in 1990, and Robert Fogel
Ph.D.'63, a winner last year.
    The university's first Nobel laureate was Woodrow
Wilson, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 and recipient
of a doctorate in history in 1886. Three current faculty
members are Nobel winners: biologist Christian Anfinsen of
the School of Arts and Sciences and molecular biologists
Hamilton O. Smith and Daniel Nathans of the School of
Medicine.

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