Irwin Rose life and biography

Irwin Rose attended Washington State University for one year prior to serving in the Navy during WWII. Upon returning from the war he received his B.S. in 1948 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1952, both from the University of Chicago. He served on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine's department of biochemistry from 1954 to 1963. He then joined Fox Chase Cancer Center's division of basic in 1963 and stayed there until he retired in 1995. He joined University of Pennsylvania during the 1970s and served as a Professor of Physical Biochemistry. He is currently a distinguished professor-in-residence in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.

Irwin "Ernie" Rose discovered ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, the means by which the cells of most living things discard unnecessary proteins. Some diseases are caused when the protein-degradation system fails or malfunctions, and a better understanding of this phenomenon has led to the development of better drugs to combat cancer, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Rose conducted his research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, with Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko collaborating over the course of several summer and sabbatical visits in Rose's laboratory. All three scientists shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004.

Rose served in the Navy during World War II, and attended college under the G.I. Bill. After more than three decades at Fox Chase he retired in 1995, then accepted an offer of a research position at University of California at Irvine two years later. His wife, Zelda Budenstein Rose, was also a respected biochemist, and spent her career studying the metabolism of red blood cells.

Awards:

Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2004 (with Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko)
National Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Ancestry Maternal
Jewish Ancestry
Russian Ancestry Paternal

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