Howard M(artin) Temin

Virologist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He spent his career at the University of Wisconsin (from 1960). Working with RNA viruses (1970), he isolated the enzyme reverse transcriptase that transcribes viral RNA into the host cell's DNA. For this achievement, he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. His later research included major contributions to studies of tumour viruses, enzyme chemistry, AIDS, and viral evolution.

Along with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore he discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970's at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Furthermore, he shared the Nobel Prize for describing how tumor viruses act on the genetical material of the cell through reverse transcriptase. This upset the widely held belief at the time of the "Central Dogma" of molecular biology posited by Nobel laureate Francis Crick, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA (along with James Watson and Rosalind Franklin). Temin showed that certain tumor viruses carried the enzymatic ability to reverse the flow of information from RNA back to DNA using reverse transcriptase. This phenomenon was also independently studied by David Baltimore, with whom Temin shared the Nobel Prize. The discovery of reverse transcriptase is one of the most important of the modern era of medicine, as reverse transcriptase is the central enzyme in several widespread human diseases, such as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and Hepatitis B. Reverse transcriptase is also an important component of several important techniques in molecular biology and diagnostic medicine, such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a long-time advocate against smoking, Temin died at the age of 59 from lung cancer, although he himself was never a smoker.