The Chemical Educator
ISSN: 1430-4171 (electronic version)
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Abstract Volume 24
(2019) pp 111-113
Thomas A. Steitz (1940–2018), An Obituary-Tribute
George B. Kauffman*
Department of Chemistry, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA 93740-8034, georgek@mail.fresnostate.edu
Published: 22 September
2019
Abstract. Thomas Arthur Steitz, a prominent molecular and structural biologist, died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Branford, Connecticut on October 9, 2018 at the age of 78. He is survived by his wife. Joan; their son Jon Glenn Steitz; two grandchildren; and four siblings, Richard, William, and Mary Steitz, and Sally Honeck. Steitz was known for his judgment in picking fundamentally important problems, and persisting, sometimes for more than a decade, until he solved them. His work on the information flow from DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) to RNA (ribonucleic acid) to protein culminated in work on the structure of the 50S subunit of the ribosome, for which he shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Israeli crystallographer Ada E. Yonath and Indian-born-American-British structural biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.”
Key Words: Chemistry and History; Molecular Biology; Structural Biology; Nobel Prize Pancreatic Cancer; Information Flow from DNA to RNA; Ribosome; Protein Crystallography; Women in Science
(*) Corresponding author.
(E-mail: georgek@mail.fresnostate.edu)
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