The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1985
Michael S. Brown, Joseph L. Goldstein
Michael S. Brown was born on April
13, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest child of Harvey
Brown, a textile salesman, and Evelyn Brown, a housewife. His
sister Susan was born three years later. When Brown was 11 years
old the family moved to Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of
Philadelphia, where Brown attended Cheltenham High School. An
amateur radio operating license obtained at age 13 led to a
life-long fascination with science. A serious interest in
journalism also developed early. These two passions, science and
writing, have remained paramount ever since.
Brown graduated in 1962 from the College of Arts and Sciences of
the University of Pennsylvania, with chemistry as his major
subject. He spent most of his time at the headquarters of the
student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, where he served as
features editor and briefly as editor-in-chief. In 1966 Brown
received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine. In 1964 he married Alice Lapin, a companion
from childhood. The next two years were spent as intern and
resident in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston. Here Brown met Joseph L. Goldstein, a fellow intern, and the
two established the friendship and mutual respect that led to
their long-term scientific collaboration.
The years 1968-1971 were spent at the National Institutes of
Health where Brown served initially as Clinical Associate in
gastroenterology and hereditary disease. He then joined the
Laboratory of Biochemistry, headed by Earl R. Stadtman, a pioneer
in the disclosure of the mechanisms by which enzymes are
regulated. Here Brown learned the techniques of enzymology and
the fundamental principles of metabolic regulation. Brown made an
important contribution to the Stadtman effort when he and a
colleague discovered that a regulatory enzyme in the glutamine
synthetic pathway was controlled by covalent attachment of a
nucleotide, uridine.
In 1971 Brown joined the division of Gastroenterology in the
Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
School in Dallas. His selection of Dallas was strongly
motivated by his friendship with Goldstein, who had graduated
from the Southwestern Medical School. In Dallas, Brown came
under the influence of Donald W. Seldin, Chairman of the
Department of Internal Medicine, an inspirational figure whose
passion for medical science shaped the lives of a generation
of Texas students.
Soon after his arrival in Dallas, Brown succeeded in solubilizing
and partially purifying 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A
reductase, a previously enigmatic enzyme that catalyzes the
rate-controlling enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis. He and
Goldstein had developed the hypothesis that abnormalities in the
regulation of this enzyme were the cause of familial
hypercholesterolemia, a genetic disease in which excess
cholesterol accumulates in blood and tissues. The formal
scientific collaboration with Goldstein began one year later, in
1972, just after Goldstein returned to Dallas from a postdoctoral
fellowship in Seattle. The two young physicians initially
maintained separate laboratories, but by 1974 the laboratories
had been formally joined.
Throughout the decade of the 1970's, when their scientific work
was most intensive, Brown and Goldstein continued to function as
academic physicians, each performing clinical attending rounds on
the general medicine wards of Parkland Memorial Hospital for six
to twelve weeks per year. They also conducted frequent teaching
rounds in medical genetics. Their research efforts were aided by
a number of talented senior collaborators and junior associates,
as well as by frequent interchange with interested members of the
Department of Internal Medicine.
In 1974, Brown was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of
Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical
School. He became a Professor in 1976. In 1977 he was appointed
Paul J. Thomas Professor of Medicine and Genetics, and Director
of the Center for Genetic Disease at the same institution. In
1985, Brown was appointed Regental Professor of the University of
Texas.
Brown was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in
1980. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the
Association of American Physicians, the American Society of
Biological Chemists, and the American Society for Cell Biology.
He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and
a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
Brown received several student awards at the University of
Pennsylvania, including a Proctor and Gamble Scholarship
(1958-1962), the David L. Drabkin Prize in Biochemistry (1962),
and the Frederick L. Packard Prize in Internal Medicine (1966).
He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha. From 1974
to 1977 he was an Established Investigator of the American Heart
Association. He has served on several review boards including the
Molecular Cytology Study Section of the National Institutes of
Health (1974-77) and the editorial boards of the Journal of
Lipid Research, the Journal of Cell Biology,
Arteriosclerosis and Science. He has been a member
of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the Jane Coffin Childs
Fund since 1980.
Brown received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the
University of Chicago (1982) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(1982). With his colleague, Goldstein, Brown has shared the
following awards: Heinrich Wieland Prize for Research in Lipid
Metabolism (1974); Pfizer Award for Enzyme Chemistry of the
American Chemical Society (1976); Albion O. Bernstein Award of
the New York State Medical Society (1977); Passano Award (1978);
Lounsbery Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1979);
Gairdner Foundation International Award (1981); New York Academy
of Sciences Award in Biological and Medical Sciences (1981); Lita
Annenberg Hazen Award (1982); V.D. Mattia Award of the Roche
Institute of Molecular Biology (1984); Distinguished Research
Award of the Association of American Medical Colleges (1984);
Research Achievement Award of the American Heart Association
(1984); Louisa Gross Horwitz Award (1984); 3M Life Sciences Award
of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
(1985); William Allan Award of the American Society of Human
Genetics (1985); and the Albert D. Lasker Award in Basic Medical
Research (1985).
Brown and Goldstein jointly delivered the following lectures:
Harvey Lecture (1977); Christian A. Herter Lectures at Johns
Hopkins University (1979); Harry Steenboch Lectures at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison (1980); Smith, Kline, and
French Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley (1981);
Duff Memorial Lecture of the American Heart Association (1981);
Doisy Lectures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(1983); the first Pfizer Lecture in Honor of Konrad Bloch at
Harvard University (1985); and the Berzelius Lecture at the
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm (1985).
Brown and his wife, Alice, have two daughters: Elizabeth (born in
1973) and Sara (born in 1977).
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1985, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1986
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1985
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