Martin Chalfie

2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Martin Chalfie, University Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his introduction of green fluorescent protein as a biological marker. 

Dr. Chalfie obtained his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and did postdoctoral research with Sydney Brenner at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England. 

As a postdoctoral fellow, Martin Chalfie with John Sulston established the first genetic model for mechanosensation using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. He and his lab study neuronal differentiation and mechanosensory transduction and its modulation in C. elegans.

Dr. Chalfie, a past president of the Society for Developmental Biology and of the American Society for Cell Biology, is a member of the US National Academies of Sciences and of Medicine and a foreign member of the Royal Society. He chairs the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.