RARE "Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Sidney Altman Hand Written Letter Dated 1995 For Sale

Up for sale the "Nobel Prize in Chemistry" Sidney Altman Hand Written Letter Dated 1995.

ES-6354

Sidney Altman (born May 7, 1939) is a Canadian

and American[2] molecular biologist, who is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and

Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale

University. In 1989 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R.

Cech for their work on the catalytic properties of RNA. Altman was born on May 7, 1939, in Montreal,

Quebec,

Canada. His parents, Ray (Arlin), a textile worker, and Victor Altman, a

grocer,[3] were immigrants to Canada, each coming from

Eastern Europe as a young adult, in the 1920s. Altman's mother was from Białystok

in Poland,

and had come to Canada with her sister at the age of eighteen, learning English

and working in a textile factory to earn money to bring the rest of their

family to Quebec. Altman's father, born in Ukraine,

had been a worker on a collective farm in the Soviet Union. He was

sponsored to come to Canada as a farm worker, but later, as a husband and a

father of two sons, he supported the family by running a small grocery store in

Montreal. Sidney Altman was later to look back on his parents' lives as an

illustration of the value of the work ethic: "It was from them I learned

that hard work in stable surroundings could yield rewards, even if only in

infinitesimally small increments."  As

Altman reached adulthood, the family's financial situation had become secure

enough that he was able to pursue a college education. He went to the United

States to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While at MIT, he was a member of the ice hockey team. After achieving his

bachelor's degree from MIT in 1960, Altman spent 18 months as a graduate

student in physics at Columbia University. Due to personal concerns

and the lack of opportunity for beginning graduate students to participate in

laboratory work, he left the program without completing the degree. Some months

later, he enrolled as a graduate student in biophysics at the University of Colorado Medical Center.

His project was a study of the effects of acridines

on the replication of bacteriophage T4 DNA. He received his

Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Colorado in 1967 with thesis

advisor Leonard Lerman; Lerman went in 1967 to Vanderbilt University, where Altman worked

briefly as a researcher in molecular biology before leaving for Harvard. Altman was married to Ann M. Körner

(daughter of Stephan Körner) in 1972. They are the parents

of two children, Daniel and Leah. Having lived primarily in the United States

since departing Montreal to attend MIT in 1958, Altman became a U.S. citizen in

1984, maintaining dual citizenship as a Canadian citizen as well. After

receiving his Ph.D., Altman embarked upon the first of two research

fellowships. He joined Matthew Meselson's laboratory at Harvard University to study a DNA endonuclease

involved in the replication and recombination of T4 DNA. Later, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

in Cambridge, England, Altman started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P

and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme. John D. Smith,

as well as several postdoctoral colleagues, provided Altman with very good

advice that enabled him to test his ideas. "The discovery of the first

radiochemically pure precursor to a tRNA

molecule enabled me to get a job as an assistant professor at Yale University

in 1971, a difficult time to get any job at all". Altman's career at Yale followed a

standard academic pattern with promotion through the ranks until he became

Professor in 1980. He was Chairman of his department from 1983 to 1985 and in

1985 became the Dean of Yale College for four years. On July 1, 1989, he

returned to the post of Professor on a full-time basis. His doctoral students

include Ben Stark. while at Yale, Altman's Nobel Prize

work came with the analysis of the catalytic properties of the ribozyme

RNase P,

a ribonucleoprotein particle consisting of both a

structural RNA molecule and one (in prokaryotes)

or more (in eukaryotes) proteins. Originally, it was believed that, in the

bacterial RNase P complex, the protein subunit was responsible for the

catalytic activity of the complex, which is involved in the maturation of

tRNAs. During experiments in which the complex was reconstituted in test tubes,

Altman and his group discovered that the RNA component, in isolation, was

sufficient for the observed catalytic activity of the enzyme,

indicating that the RNA itself had catalytic properties, which was the

discovery that earned him the Nobel Prize. Although the RNase P complex also

exists in eukaryotic organisms, his later work revealed that in those

organisms, the protein subunits of the complex are essential to the catalytic

activity, in contrast to the bacterial RNase P.