Phillip A. Sharp

Phillip Allen Sharp is an American geneticist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1993 for his discovery of RNA splicing, the technique of modifying the RNA. He shared the prize with Richard J. Roberts. Sharp discovered that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but they contain introns. The messenger RNA can be spliced to delete these introns and different proteins can be obtained from the same sequence of DNA.

Phillip Sharp is also an accomplished businessman and is the co-founder of 3 successful companies Biogen, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Magen Biosciences. Sharp was awarded the Dickson Prize 1980, Lasker Award 1988, Benjamin Franklin Medal by the American Philosophical Society 1999 and the National Medal of Science 2004.