The world becomes a hollow place whenever a valuable personality passes away. If a few weeks ago mathematician John Nash and his wife were killed in a car crash, today we found out that the American biochemist and Nobel laureate Irwin Rose has died at the age of 88.
The news was revealed by the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where Rose had been a researcher and had his life unfolding in the middle of the Chemistry realm, science that had always been Rose’s passion, trying to take it to a new level of discovery and enrich its branches of research and analysis.
2004 was the year that brought Rose a consistent reward for his lifetime achievement, being one of the Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry, along with two other important names in the field, Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, members of the Israel Institute of Technology. The award was the natural compensation for a breakthrough achievement in Chemistry. Irwin Rose revealed a ground breaking study on enzymes that break down and dispose of unwanted proteins in plants and animals.
His research was the first step in helping scientists understand molecular activities in cancer and other diseases, which are a threat for the human race and still represent a challenge of modern medicine and chemistry.
Rose worked with priceless values, his character being defined by fundamental curiosity related to the biological and chemical processes that make up the foundation for life, as fond colleagues from the university stated in recent press declarations.
Rose earned a doctoral degree at University of Chicago in 1952 and spend most of his career years at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, working as a research scientist. And a very prolific one, as his achievements reveal. A lifetime passion was translated in spectacular breakthroughs in an area that is based on abstraction and nuances, thus needs dedication and passion to push its boundaries farther. Rose managed to do that and deserves worldwide respect and consideration, along with permanent recognition for an achievement that still helps scientists discover secrets well kept by chemical formulas, biological processes, evolution and constant alterations.
He was a leader of thought and an innovative thinker, as he became fascinated with the problem of protein disposal early in the 1950’s, when very few biochemists shared his enthusiasm. Back in the days, scientific inquiry was focused on the way things were created, with cells reading the blueprints encoded in DNA and using the information to manufacture proteins. He came up with an opposite perspective over the matter, focusing his research efforts on the question of how proteins were being destroyed.
The world mourns over the loss of such a valuable character and remains hopeful that great minds still exist, to celebrate and wisely use all the innovative findings predecessors leave behind.
Image Source: uci.edu
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