Paul Berg

Molecular biologist, born in New York City, USA. He studied at Pennsylvania State and Western Reserve universities, and became professor of biochemistry at Washington University, St Louis, and from 1959 at Stanford University. He devised a method for introducing ‘foreign’ genes into bacteria, so causing the bacteria to produce proteins determined by the new gene; this method of genetic engineering proved of great value in giving biochemical syntheses of insulin and interferon. He shared the 1980 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Paul Berg (born June 30, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is an American biochemist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. in biochemistry from Penn State University in 1948 and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1952. All three were recognized for their important contributions to basic research in nucleic acids. This resulted in the understanding of how foodstuffs are converted to cellular materials, through the use of isotopic carbons or heavy nitrogen atoms. Paul Berg's doctorate paper is now known as the conversion of Formic Acid, Formaldehyde and Methanol to fully reduced states of methyl groups in methionine.

Paul's new research has ventured from metabolic biochemistry, and as a professor in Stanford University he now researches Molecular Biology and Recombinant DNA. Other studies, involving the HIV-1 virus, are being conducted by his research team.

Prof. Berg is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.He was also an organizer of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA in 1975.

Berg was also awarded the National Medal of Science in 1983, by Ronald Reagan.