Dr. Roger D. Kornberg

Roger Kornberg is Winzer Professor in Medicine in the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. In his doctoral research, he demonstrated the diffusional motions of lipids in membranes, termed flip-flop and lateral diffusion. He was a postdoctoral fellow and member of the scientific staff at the Laboratory of Molecular biology in Cambridge, England from 1972 to 1975, where he discovered the nucleosome, the basic unit of DNA coiling in chromosomes. He moved to his present position in 1978, where his research has focused on the mechanism and regulation of eukaryotic gene transcription. Notable findings include the demonstration of the role of nucleosomes in transcription, the isolation of all the proteins involved, the discovery of the Mediator of transcriptional regulation, and the atomic structure determination of an RNA polymerase II transcribing complex. These findings led to his many awards including the 2001 Welch Award in Chemistry and the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.