The citation records of the six North Americans who clinched the 1990 awards in medicine, chemistry, and physics (The Scientist, Nov. 12, 1990, page 8) indicate the broad and decisive impact these eminent individuals have had in their fields.
Medicine or Physiology
Two medical doctors on opposite coasts of the continental United States shared this year's Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology. E. Donnall Thomas and Joseph E. Murray were honored for their breakthrough research in transplant medicine. Thomas, 70, director emeritus of the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Division of Clinical Research, was cited for his work on bone marrow transplantation. In 1956, Thomas successfully transplanted donor marrow into a human patient. During the next decade, Thomas and his group at the University of Washington developed ways to improve tissue typing to better match donors with hosts. They also worked on the problem of graft-versus-host disease, an autoimmune ...
