Paul Berg

Paul Berg joined our Board of Directors in April 1998. He served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine and was, until 2000, Director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. He is also a director and scientific advisor to Affymetrix Inc., as well as a scientific advisor to Perlegen Sciences Inc. and Burrill and Company. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1983 and the Nobel Prize in 1980 for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids. Paul Berg was born June 30, 1926, in Brooklyn, a son of Harry and Sarah (Brodsky) Bergsaltz, immigrants from Russia. His father was a furrier. Dr. Berg graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1948. He received a doctorate in biochemistry from Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland in 1952, then did postdoctoral work at the Institute of Cytophysiology in Copenhagen and at Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the university faculty in 1955. In 1953 he moved to Stanford University along with another future Nobel laureate, Arthur Kornberg, Along with the 1980 Nobel, Dr. Berg was also a recipient of the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry in 1959, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1980 and the National Medal of Science in 1983. He married Mildred Levy in 1947. She died in 2021. He is survived by a brother, Jack, and a son, John.