Quotes from colleagues: Comments on Nobel Prize winner Roger Kornberg

“Professor Kornberg's seminal research on transcription has been an exceptional contribution to the body of knowledge in fundamental biology. His work settled long open questions about how genes communicate the information needed to make proteins and will help us understand a variety of diseases that can be caused by a failure in the transcription process. For the second time this week, a colleague’s achievement reminds us of the unique role universities have in advancing basic knowledge. We are proud to claim Professor Kornberg as a member of the Stanford family, together with his father Arthur, who won a Nobel Prize in 1959. I offer Roger warm congratulations on behalf of the entire university community.” — Stanford University President John Hennessy

“Roger Kornberg is one of our nation's treasured scientists. He has dedicated his life and career to using the powerful tools of structural biology to elucidate the molecular mechanism of transcription. His remarkable studies have been acclaimed for their elegance and technical sophistication as well as the unique insights they have yielded. His work has deepened our understanding of the ‘message of life’ and how it contributes to both normal and abnormal human development, health and disease.

“This is truly a special day for Roger, his family and Stanford. His father, professor emeritus Arthur Kornberg won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1959 and played a major role in transforming the Stanford University School of Medicine into a research-intensive powerhouse. He was clearly productive in both his professional life and his private life—since he is the father of remarkably talented children, including Roger—who has sustained a legacy of brilliance and commitment to science and the deepening of our understanding of human life.” — Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine

“I felt he richly deserved it for a long time. His work has been awesome. . . . I talked to him at length [yesterday] and couldn’t help but discuss this possibility — I know he’s been shortlisted in previous years; he dismissed it, saying it was a possibility but he didn’t expect it. That’s the way it goes. . . . I would say among the [scientists] I know—and I have trained many hundreds—he has the clearest vision, sense of purpose and direction. . . . I’m looking forward to being in Stockholm, where we have many friends. They put on a great party.” — Arthur Kornberg, who is Roger’s father as well as a 1959 Nobel laureate and a professor emeritus at Stanford University School of Medicine,

From the BBC: "If the secret of life could be likened to a machine, the process of transcription would be a central cog in the machinery that drives all others,” said "Kornberg has given us an extraordinarily detailed view of this machine, which is essential for all life."

From National Geographic News: Lars Thelander, who was on the selection committee for the chemistry Nobel, spoke of  Kornberg’s success in creating a detailed image of the transcription process. "This allows us for the first time to see the chemical details of transcription,” Thelander said. “They were unknown before. . . . This is, of course, basic science. But it has many implications for human diseases, antibiotics, stem cells, and so on. I foresee lots of significance and use for this knowledge."

From the Associated Press: "Kornberg realized … that to get to the chemical details of the (process) was fundamental," said Anders Liljas, a member of the Nobel Committee in Chemistry. "Because if you don't really see it on a molecular, atomic level, then you don't really understand it."

From the Associated Press: Jeremy M. Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Md., which has supported Kornberg's work for more than 20 years, called Kornberg's prize "fantastically well-deserved." The question of how information from genes is turned into RNA is fundamental, Berg said, and Kornberg "started working on it when it seemed somewhere between ambitious and crazy" to figure out the detailed structure and functioning of the cell's machinery for doing the job, he said.

From the Scientist: Throughout his career, Kornberg has maintained a relatively small lab, with about 20 active lab members. "It's not like those American empire labs with 30 or 40 postdocs," said Jesper Svejstrup, PhD, a former post-doc in Kornberg's lab who is now a principal investigator at Cancer Research UK. "Especially in the beginning, he would know more and remember more about my project than I did. It was very impressive, and he's still that way."

As a graduate student at Stanford, Roger Kornberg worked on the structure of membranes in the lab of Harden McConnell, PhD, the Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. “He accomplished some really significant results in his work on membranes,” said McConnell. “Those results are still timely today. They’re still cited. He was in good shape to make discoveries from the get-go.”

 “It seemed to me that his time had come. It’s been an intellectual treat to follow his work. We’ve kept in contact throughout the years.
“Those were very exciting times in the 1970s. Francis Crick [Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962] was around. Crick is a very great talker. In a sense I suppose Arthur learned something from Crick and myself. I suppose he also learned what not to do.
“He was rather serious and worked long hours into the night. He and groups of other without families would get fish and chips at the hospital canteen. I was married. The young guys were up all night. The lab was a pretty lively place. The lab now has nine Nobel Prizes and 13 Nobel laureates. It’s the place where molecular biology was founded. There were a lot of Americans. The British on the whole were more reticent.
“Roger spoke his mind if he didn’t think something was right. He was not a meek fellow. He’s got a mission. And the mission is to solve the problem he’s working on, and he’s very, very, very dedicated. I guess you have to be.”— Sir Aaron Klug, PhD, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1982, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England, who was Kornberg’s advisor where he did research in chromatin structure in the early 1970s

# # #