Oliver Smithies: A Remembrance.

Abstract

Oliver Smithies, who passed away in January 2017 at 91 years of age, was a highly accomplished scientist, Nobel Laureate, and Member of the National Academy of Sciences. However, for those who had the opportunity to know him, collaborate with him, or attend one of his lectures, he was also an endearing, inspirational, and entertaining figure, with a deep love for science and a complete lack of pretension. Oliver had a profound curiosity and an inventor’s spirit. During his long career, Oliver made several contributions to science, 2 of which particularly stand out. The first was the development of starch gel electrophoresis as a simple and reliable method for separating proteins by molecular size. Oliver’s invention of this technique, which was a precursor to modern polyacrylamide gel separation, was inspired by his recollections of his mother using starch as she was doing laundry at home, remembering that starch dissolved in water and heated, developed a jelly-like consistency. After perfecting this technique, Oliver defined common inherited polymorphisms of haptoglobin and other human plasma proteins. This work was his gateway into genetics, which would become a lifelong passion, and he was an active participant in the revolution of molecular biology and genetics in the 1950s and 1960s. Oliver’s second major contribution was the development of an approach for specifically modifying the mammalian genome using homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells, commonly referred to as gene targeting, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007 along with Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans. This discovery had broad impact on biological research, making it possible to induce precise alterations in a …