Michael Smith; Won Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Michael Smith, 68, one of Canada’s leading researchers, whose work on DNA studies earned him a share of the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1993. The former director of the British Columbia Cancer Agency’s Genome Sequence Center, Smith won for his discovery of a way to alter DNA molecules to learn their functions and then to reprogram them to perform differently. The technique, called site-directed mutagenesis, allows scientists to genetically engineer human proteins with applications in medicine and basic research. Born in Blackpool, England, Smith received scholarships to private schools and then to the University of Manchester, where he earned a doctorate in chemistry. “It was always very clear to me that I was much better at math and physics and chemistry than anything else, so I never had any problems deciding what I would do,” Smith once told a reporter. On Wednesday of leukemia at Vancouver General Hospital.