I am deeply honored to be named by the Stanford Medicine Alumni Association this year for the “Arthur Kornberg and Paul Berg Lifetime Achievement Award in Biomedical Sciences.”
As a Stanford graduate student in the 1980s, I took a remarkable class in plasmid and phage replication from Dr. Kornberg. I marveled at his incisive manner of teaching complex concepts in science. I learned fundamentals of retroviral gene transfer from postdoctoral fellows and technical staff in Dr. Berg’s laboratory. I was in constant awe of Dr. Berg’s statesmanship on the world stage as a spokesman for science.
Arthur Kornberg, M.D. and Paul Berg, Ph.D. were luminaries long before I was a graduate student. Professor Kornberg won the Nobel in Physiology or Medicine for isolating DNA polymerase and demonstrating how it could replicate DNA in a test tube. Professor Berg won the Nobel in Chemistry by showing the first inter-species DNA hybrid of bacterial and eukaryotic viral DNA and replicating it in bacteria. Professor Berg was instrumental in pointing out the dilemmas around recombinant DNA at the foundational Asilomar Conference in 1975, a critical meeting focusing on the ethical uses of rec-DNA technology.
Dr. Kornberg’s and Dr. Berg’s efforts deeply touched biomedical sciences and helped patients worldwide. They symbolized science's dual role in fundamental discovery and service to humanity.
