Werner Arber

Swiss microbiologist Werner Arber was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1978, sharing the $165,000 award with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton O. Smith. Observing that when a virus entered bacterium, most of the viral deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was destroyed, Arber theorized that the bacterium produced an enzyme that severed the viral DNA into smaller pieces. Nathans and Smith later proved that Arber was correct -- that certain enzymes, called 'restriction enzyme' or 'restriction endonuclease', cleave long strands of DNA into tiny fragments. These fragments, which retain their genetic information, led to the development of gene splicing -- techniques for separating, manipulating, and eventually altering this basic genetic material.

After winning his Nobel honors, Arber became an outspoken participant in the establishment of guidelines to conduct recombinant DNA research safely and ethically. His daughter, Silvia Arber, is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Basel, studying neuronal circuit formation in the developing spinal cord.