from
UK Public Relations
from
UK Public Relations
GENETICS RESEARCHER PHILLIP SHARP
WINS ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Dan Adkins, 606-257-1754
March 11, 1999 -- (Lexington, Ky.) -- Kentucky native Phillip A. Sharp, whose research into molecular genetics has altered medical thinking about cancer and hereditary diseases, has been named the recipient of the 1999 University of Kentucky Libraries Medallion for Intellectual Achievement. He will be presented with the award during the UK Library Associates' annual meeting at 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 24 at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Michael Beschloss will present the Edward F. Prichard Jr. Lecture.
Sharp, 54, a native of Falmouth, and his colleague Richard J. Roberts of Derby, England, dramatically changed the field of molecular genetics in 1977, when they discovered DNA molecules occurring in segments, or "splicing." Their research yielded to the possibility that cancer and other hereditary diseases may be treated by correcting problems in genetic splicing. Sharp and Roberts won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Sharp is a trustee and member of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; chairman of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Awards Assembly; member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in the United Kingdom; member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology; and member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Now professor and chair of the Department of Biology and director of the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sharp earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry and mathematics from Union College in Barbourville in 1966 and his doctorate in chemistry in 1969 from the University of Illinois. He joined the faculty at MIT as an associate professor in 1974, becoming a full professor in 1979. He has served as head of the Department of Biology since 1991.
Sharp is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, an elected member of the Council of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and an elected associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.