Two-time Nobel Prize winner Sanger
LONDON - British biochemist Frederick Sanger, who twice won the Nobel Prize in chemistry and was a pioneer of genome sequencing, has died at age 95.
His death was confirmed Wednesday by the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which Sanger helped found in 1962.
The laboratory praised Sanger, who died in his sleep Tuesday at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, as an “extremely modest and self-effacing man whose contributions have made an extraordinary impact on molecular biology.”
Sanger was one of just four individuals to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes; the others were Marie Curie, Linus Pauling and John Bardeen.
Sanger first won the Nobel Prize in 1958 at age 40 for his work on the structure of proteins. He had determined the sequence of the amino acids in insulin and showed how they are linked together.
He later turned his attention to the sequencing of nucleic acids and developing techniques to determine the exact sequence of the building blocks in DNA.
That work led to Sanger’s second Nobel Prize, awarded jointly in 1980 with Stanford University’s Paul Berg and Harvard University’s Walter Gilbert, for their work determining base sequences in nucleic acids.
In addition to the Nobel Prizes, Sanger was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963 and received the Order of Merit in 1986.
Sanger declined a knighthood, however, because he preferred not to be called “sir,” according to the laboratory he helped found.
Screenwriting-manual author Field, 77
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES - Syd Field, the author of the screenplay manual that inspired James Cameron and Judd Apatow to make movies, has died.
A spokesman for Field says the author died Sunday of a blood disorder at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 77.
Derek Christopher said Tuesday that Field was surrounded by friends and family, including his brother, Dr. Morton Field, and wife, Aviva Field.
Syd Field’s book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, has been required reading in Hollywood since it was published in 1979. It has been translated into 23 languages and used in universities around the world.
A Hollywood-born graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Field wrote eight books on screenwriting and lectured across North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Before his death, he was preparing to release video and audio recordings of his most recent lectures, given earlier this year.
Christopher said he hopes the materials will be available in 2014.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 11/21/2013