Thomas Arthur Steitz was born on August 23, 1940, and passed away on October 9, 2018. He was an American scientist who studied how living things work. He was a professor at Yale University and worked with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is most famous for his research on the ribosome, a part of cells that helps make proteins.

In 2009, Steitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Ada Yonath. They received the prize for studying the structure and function of the ribosome. In 2007, he was given the Gairdner International Award for showing that a reaction called peptidyl transferase is helped by RNA molecules. His work also explained how certain medicines stop this reaction in cells.

Education and career

Thomas A. Steitz was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and graduated in 1962. In June 2010, the university renamed its chemistry building Thomas A. Steitz Hall of Science in his honor.

He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University in 1966. At Harvard, he worked under the guidance of William N. Lipscomb, Jr., who later won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. During his time at Harvard, Steitz helped determine the atomic structures of two important enzymes: carboxypeptidase A (EC 3.4.17.1) and aspartate carbamoyltransferase (EC 2.1.3.2). Each of these structures was the largest atomic structure known at the time.

After earning his doctorate, Steitz completed postdoctoral research as a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 1967 to 1970.

He briefly worked as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, but left because the university would not allow his wife, Joan, to join the faculty as a woman. Instead, both Tom and Joan Steitz joined the faculty at Yale University in 1970. At Yale, Steitz continued research in cellular and structural biology. He and Peter Moore used X-ray crystallography to determine the atomic structure of the large 50S ribosomal subunit. Their findings were published in Science in 2000. In 2009, Steitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on the ribosome.

Steitz was also a Macy Fellow at the University of Göttingen from 1976 to 1977 and a Fairchild Scholar at the California Institute of Technology from 1984 to 1985.

He co-founded a company called Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, which is now known as Melinta Therapeutics. The company focuses on developing new antibiotics based on the structure of the ribosome.

Honors

• Received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009
• Was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2011

Private life

He liked skiing, hiking, and gardening.

Steitz was married to Joan A. Steitz, a well-known molecular biologist who is also a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale. He lived with her in Branford, Connecticut, and had one son, Jon, and two grandchildren, Adam and Maddy. He died on October 9, 2018, from complications caused by treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Publications

• Steitz, T. A., et al. "Study of the Highly Detailed Structure of the Large Part of the Ribosome from Haloarcula marismortui," NSLS Newsletter, (November 2000).
• Steitz, T. A., et al. "The Highly Detailed Structure of the Large Part of the Ribosome from Haloarcula marismortui," NSLS Activity Report (2000).