Rodbell, Martin, 1925-1998

Rodbell was an American biochemist and molecular endocrinologist. In 1949, he earned a B.S. in biology from Johns Hopkins University, and in 1954 he completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Washington. Two years later, Rodbell accepted a position as a research biochemist at the National Heart Institute (now the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute), National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1961, Rodbell transferred to the laboratories of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD). In 1975 he became Chief of the Laboratory of Nutrition and Endocrinology at NIAMD. Ten years later, Rodbell left the Bethesda campus to become Scientific Director of the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a position he held until 1989 when he became Chief of the Section on Signal Transduction there. In 1994 Rodbell, along with Alfred G. Gilman of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of signal transduction. He retired from NIEHS in 1994 to devote his time to lecturing. Four years later he died in Chapel Hill, following a long illness.