March 6, 2020
David Reich, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School. “Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA.”
March 22, 2018
Mary-Claire King, Professor of Genome Sciences and of Medicine (Medical Genetics), University of Washington. “Genetics is a way of thinking; genomics is a set of tools.”
Our inaugural award winner, Professor Nancy S. Wexler from Columbia University and the Hereditary Disease Foundation, is a perfect example of high caliber genetic research that has an enormous impact on human lives.
Nancy S. Wexler, Ph.D.
Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University
Mendel, Muller, Morgan, Mom, and me: An ever-expanding voyage of discovery
H. J. Muller invented novel ways to map genes on chromosomes by looking at genes and nearest neighbors. His research collaboration with Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University, using fruit flies, proved that genes reside in specific homes on chromosomes and that Mendelian principles govern inheritance.
My mother was also a biologist working with fruit flies at Columbia.
Like my mom, Morgan, Muller, and Mendel—I became a Gene Hunter. Starting in 1979, I began my voyage to Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, home to the world’s largest family with Huntington’s disease to look for the HD gene.
In 1983, against all odds, we discovered a DNA marker which gives the neighborhood of the HD gene. We then launched an international collaboration of more than 100 scientists to find the HD gene itself. It took a decade of work. In 1993, we found the HD gene.
As a Cure Hunter, I continue our quest—to find treatments and cures for Huntington’s disease and related brain bandits.
The College of Arts