Sidney Altman
We soon suggested that the RNA subunit of RNase P was part of the active center of the enzyme, by analogy to the then current picture of the ribosome.
We are very fortunate to be recognized here in such an extraordinary manner for work that we enjoy.
We are united in the hope that every individual will someday enjoy at least the intellectual privileges we have had, if not always the material advantages.
Thus, the pathways leading to the discoveries of RNA catalysis were not as direct as one might imagine from reading about the results in textbooks.
This result explained why the purification, which had been designed to isolate a proteinaceous complex, was so difficult. It also led to much disbelief in the community of enzymologists.
This century has already seen too many tyrannies engage in the distortion and destruction of the finest creative impulses of humankind.
The RNA World referred to an hypothetical stage in the origin of life on Earth.
The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old.
The discovery of the first radiochemically pure precursor to a tRNA molecule enabled me to get a job as an assistant professor at Yale University in 1971, a difficult time to get any job at all.
The chemical details of catalysis by RNase P remain to be fully worked out although a rough picture of this reaction is now available.
Our colleagues, indeed all citizens everywhere, should have the right to think in a free and open manner, to imagine and discover the previously unimagined and unknown without anticipating that there might be oppressive consequences.
No sacrifice was too great to forward our education and, fortunately, books and the tradition of study were not unknown in our family.
Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.
My involvement in the discovery of the first catalytic RNA began in innocence during a study of tRNA biosynthesis in Escherichia coli.
My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
My career at Yale followed a standard academic pattern with promotion through the ranks until I became Professor in 1980.
Lee Grodzins supervised my senior thesis in nuclear physics and provided me with a wonderful research experience and with his friendship.
It was from them that I learned that hard work in stable surroundings could yield rewards, even if only in infinitesimally small increments.
Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and forward-looking government.
I was fortunate enough to isolate and characterize a precursor tRNA, one of the intermediates in the metabolic pathway leading to the synthesis of mature tRNA.