Rodbell, Martin (1925–98)

Born on December 1, 1925, in Baltimore, Maryland, Martin Rodbell shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1994 for his 1970s research in the function of G-proteins.

Rodbell attended Baltimore City College, a public high school, and then he began studying biology and French literature at the Johns Hopkins University in 1943. Leaving Johns Hopkins to serve as a Navy radio operator during World War II in 1944, Rodbell returned to his studies in 1946, earning his B.S. in biology in 1949. He pursued studies in chemistry for a year after earning his B.S.

Marrying Dutch-born dancer and photographer Barbara Ledermann in 1950, the couple moved to Washington where Rodbell began pursuing his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Washington. The couple had four children together.

Completing his Ph.D. in 1954, Rodbell began working as a biochemical research assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Two years later, he accepted a job as a research biochemist at the Christian Anfinsen at the National Heart Institute; this organization is now known as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1961, Rodbell began working for the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, an organization now part of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Through his research, Rodbell in 1969 could describe components of cell-based communication, calling this process “signal transduction.” Furthermore, he uncovered the function of G-proteins early in the 1970s, which earned him his 1994 Nobel Prize along with Alfred G. Gilman. From 1975 to 1985, Rodbell served as Chief of the Laboratory of Nutrition and Endocrinology. In 1985, he began working at the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, promoted to Chief of Section on Signal Transduction in 1989.

During his career, Rodbell often worked at overseas laboratories, including the University of Brussels, Belgium, and Leiden University, the Netherlands (1960– 61) and the Institute of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Geneva, Switzerland (1967–68 and 1981–83).

Rodbell died on December 7, 1998, from multiple organ failure.