About
J. Michael Bishop
Arthur Rock and Toni Tembe Rock Distinguished Professor and chancellor, University of California, San Francisco, USA, and director of the G.W. Hooper Research Foundation at UCSF; 1989 Nobel laureate in physiology/medicine
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J. Michael Bishop shared the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine in 1989 with his colleague Harold Varmus for their research into oncogenes, normal genes that control growth in every living cell but which can turn renegade and cancerous under certain conditions. Their work was based on the hypothesis that the growth of cancer cells is not the result of an invasion from outside the cell but rather of a misuse of a normal gene by a retrovirus resulting from exposure to some aggravating carcinogen. More than 50 oncogenes have now been identified, and Bishop's research has led to significant breakthroughs in the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of cancers.
Bishop earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Gettysburg College (B.A., 1957) and his medical degree from Harvard (M.D., 1962). After two years on the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital and postdoctoral work at NIH and in Germany, he began his teaching career at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1968 in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Since 1982 has also been a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. In 1981 he was named director of the G.W. Hooper Research Foundation and of UCSF's Program in Biological Sciences. He became chancellor of UCSF in 1998 and now has a unique perspective as researcher, practitioner, teacher, administrator, and observer of the greater medical scene.
Bishop is the author or co-author of more than 500 scientific publications. In addition to the Nobel Prize, his work in molecular biology has been recognized with the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1982) and the Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Medal from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation (1984) among other honors.