Thomas R. Cech, PhD
Nobel Laureate
Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
BioFrontiers Institute
University of Colorado Boulder

Chancellor Ballroom, I-Hotel and Conference Center 

Reception and book signing to follow. 

Thomas Cech was born in Chicago and grew up in Iowa City. As a child, Cech collected rocks and minerals and would "talk" science with his father and professors at the University of Iowa. In 1966, Cech went to Grinnell College to study chemistry - a subject he really enjoyed. College was a real eye-opener as he met others who were just as excited about academics as he was. He would have stayed in chemistry, but as an undergraduate, Cech worked at Argonne National Laboratory and at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. These research experiences made him realize that it just took too long to gather meaningful data for a chemistry experiment.

In 1970, Cech headed for the University of California at Berkeley for graduate work. Here he discovered the world of molecular biology. As he says, he "was thrilled with the much more rapid interplay between idea and experimental test that was possible in this field," and he "became committed to the interface between molecular biology and chemistry." Cech finished his PhD thesis on DNA chromosome structure and then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for post doctoral work.

In 1978, Cech accepted a position in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder. It was here that he and his research group did the work leading to the discovery that RNA can self-splice and thus can act as a ribozyme. For this discovery, Cech shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Sidney Altman.

In 1988, Cech became an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and in 2000, assumed duties as the President of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Among his many honors and awards, Cech received the 1995 National Medal of Science.