WASHINGTON (EJP)—The son of a cantor,Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University, an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was one of three American scientists to win the 2017 Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Rosbash, 74, whose parents fled Nazi Germany, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Caltech before coming to MIT to pursue a PhD in biology. He has been on the faculty at Brandeis since 1974, and he is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
The prize awarded to Rosbash, 74, and the two others, Jeffrey C. Hall of Brandeis University and Michael W. Young of the Rockefeller University, was for their discoveries about molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s daily rhythm.
They used fruit flies to isolate a gene that controls the rhythm of a living organism’s daily life. The biological inner clocks regulate functions such as sleep, behavior, hormone levels and body temperature.