Walter Gilbert is a molecular biologist who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of how to sequence, or chemically describe, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules . Gilbert also identified repressor molecules, which modify or repress the activity of certain genes, and collaborated with Noble laureate biologist James Watson in his efforts to isolate messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA). Later in his career, Gilbert helped form and was chief executive officer of the biotechnology firm Biogen, and became a moving force in the medical research project known as the human genome project.

Gilbert was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1932. His father, Richard V. Gilbert, was an economist at Harvard University, and his mother, Emma Cohen Gilbert, was a child psychologist who provided her children's early education at home. In 1939 the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Gilbert initially performed poorly in school. He did, however, show a...