Robert Holley; Scientist Won Nobel Prize
Robert William Holley, who in 1968 shared the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for pioneering research into the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis, has died. He was 71.
Holley died Thursday of lung cancer at his home in Los Gatos, Calif. Until he became ill last year, Holley had pursued his research in the regulation of cell growth as a resident fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla.
“Bob was a scientist of the old school, who was always ready to share his time and his ideas with others,” said Renato Dulbecco, Salk president emeritus. “He was a very gentle and private person who never sought the limelight. Science was his life.”
At the time Holley shared the Nobel Prize, he was working at the Salk Institute while on sabbatical from the Department of Agriculture’s Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
Holley’s co-winners, who shared the $70,000 prize, were Marshall W. Nirenberg of the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Md., and Har Gobind Khorana of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The three men conducted their research independently.
“This means that we suddenly have got to understand the alphabet of life as far as heredity is concerned,” said Hugo Theorell, a Swedish Nobel laureate. “Their great feat in research lies in the fact they have shown what it is we have to attack to combat hereditary illnesses.
“The three winners independently have managed to break the genetic code,” he said. “Nirenberg by providing the very key to its structure, and Khorana and Holley by proving its structure in detail.”
A native of Urbana, Ill., Holley studied chemistry at the University of Illinois and earned his doctorate in organic chemistry at Cornell.
After winning the Nobel, Holley permanently transferred his work to the Salk Institute, supported by a lifetime research grant from the American Cancer Society.
Holley also earned awards from the U.S. Steel Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences.
He is survived by his wife, Ann, a son, and two grandchildren.
