Oliver Smithies at the 2010 Nobel Laureate Meeting at LindauWIKIMEDIA, MAPOSOliver Smithies, the technologist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2007 for his hand in developing tools that could knock out specific genetic components in model organisms, died on Tuesday (January 10) after a brief illness at the age of 91.
Prior to winning a Nobel Prize, Smithies—who also invented starch gel electrophoresis —received a Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2001 for the development of gene targeting, enabling researchers to create thousands of strains of genetically altered mice.
Smithies’ colleagues remembered him as an adept motivator, able to inspire in others the same passion that marked his own career. Bradley Popovich, Smithies’ postdoc in the late 1980s, said that Smithies’ ability as a teacher was a logical outgrowth of his drive to innovate. “He did things that others could only dream of, and then he was able to teach others how to do them,” said Popovich, who is now a genomic health strategy consultant at Genome British Columbia. “He led by example, and I admire ...
