Editor's Note: The National Academy of Sciences has elected 60 new members and 15 foreign associates from 10 countries in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. In this article, The Scientist presents photographs of most of the new members and comments from some of them. A full directory of NAS members can be found online at www.nas.edu/nas.


When in 1977 the genes of eukaryotes were found to be riddled with nonprotein-encoding stretches of bases, the dogma of the gene as a neat, contiguous unit was forever shattered. When no introns turned up in prokaryotes, they were thought to be part and parcel of eukaryotes. Then Marlene Belfort and her coworkers at the Wadsworth Center laboratories of the New York State Department of Health added a new chapter. "We were looking at the thymidylate synthetase gene in phage T4, and the DNA sequence didn't match the...

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