Oliver Smithies, DPhil

Abstract

Dr Oliver Smithies, Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, passed away on January 10 after a short illness at the age of 91. Dr Smithies made many contributions to biomedical science during his more than 60 years at the laboratory bench but is best known for his contribution to developing the concepts and operative techniques that enabled thousands of laboratories to carry out targeted, homologous recombination in mammalian cells, enabling targeted genetic modifications in mice. The ability to rapidly effect directed changes at the genetic site of one’s choice opened a golden age for establishing cause-and-effect relationships for normal and mutated genes. Indeed, the sequences that both control gene activity and modulate the protein complement of different cells were suddenly amenable to mechanistic dissection. The development of gene targeting via homologous recombination led to his sharing the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007, with Mario Capecchi, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Utah, and Sir Martin Evans, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. The Nobel was only one of many prestigious honors awarded to Dr Smithies during his long career. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1971 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. He won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2001; again along with Drs Capecchi and Evans, the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr Prize from the General Motors Foundation; jointly with Capecchi in 1994, the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology; again jointly with Capecchi in 2005; and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal in 2007. A complete listing of all his awards and honors, regional, national, and international would fill this entire In Memoriam , but suffice …