George Emil Palade
 |
Dr. Palade won the Nobel Prize in 1974. |
George Emil Palade (born in
Iaşi,
November 19,
1912) is a
Romanian cell biologist. In
1974, he shared with two colleagues the
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.
George Palade received a M.D. in
1940 from the School of Medicine of the
University of Bucharest,
Romania. He was a member of the faculty of that school until
1945 when he went to the
United States for postdoctoral studies. There, he joined Prof.
Albert Claude at the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In
1952, Palade became a
naturalized citizen of the United States. He was a professor at the Rockefeller Institute (1958-1973),
Yale University Medical School (1973-1990), and
University of California, San Diego (1990-present).
He won the
1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for
describing the structure and function of organelles in cellsIn
1986, he received the
National Medal of Science, USA.
At the Rockefeller Institute, Palade used
electron microscopy to study the internal organization of such cell structures as
mitochondria,
chloroplasts, the Golgi apparatus, and others. His most important discovery was related to
ribosomes.
His name has become
attached to the
Weibel-Palade bodies (a storage organelle unique to the
endothelium, containing
von Willebrand factor and various proteins) which he described together with the Swiss anatomist
Ewald R. Weibel (Weibel ER, Palade GE. New cytoplasmic components in arterial endothelia. J Cell Biol 1964;23:101-112).
*
Autobiography written in 1974 for the Nobel Prize* Professor Palade's
current webpage at University of California, San Diego
