Gerald Ralph Fink (born July 1, 1940) is an American biologist, who was Director of the

Whitehead Institute Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indepen ...

at MIT from 1990–2001. He graduated from Amherst College in 1962 and received a Ph.D. from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...

in 1965, having elucidated the histidine pathway in budding yeast, ''

Saccharomyces cerevisiae ''Saccharomyces cerevisiae'' () (brewer's yeast or baker's yeast) is a species of yeast (single-celled fungus microorganisms). The species has been instrumental in winemaking, baking, and brewing since ancient times. It is believed to have been ...

''. After postdoctoral study at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1 ...

with Bruce Ames on the regulation of the histidine operon of Salmonella, in 1967 he joined Cornell University where he became a Professor of Genetics and pursued the study of the HIS4 region of yeast. In 1982 he became a founding member of the Whitehead Institute and Professor of Genetics at MIT. Dr. Fink was elected to the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Natio ...

in 1981, to the

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...

in 1996, and to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2003. Fink taught a course in the Molecular Biology of Yeast at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for 16 years. Many of these students as well as his university students went on to have successful careers in molecular biology. In 1977, Fink and his students Albert Hinnen and Jim Hicks, discovered a method to transform yeast cells, a procedure that allows scientists to introduce genetic material (DNA) from another organism into living yeast cells so that the expression and hereditability of the introduced DNA can be studied. This transformation procedure is not only essential for basic research, but is used to produce vaccines and other medically important products in yeast. In 1992 Fink and his students discovered that bakers’ yeast could switch from a cellular form to a filamentous form. This switch is important for many disease-causing fungi of both plants and animals. In 2003 Fink chaired a National Research Council Committee that resulted in a highly influential report, Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism: Confronting the Dual Use Dilemma (http://download.nap.edu/cart/deliver.cgi?record_id=10827). This report recommended practices that could improve the capacity to prevent the destructive application of biotechnology research while still enabling legitimate research to be conducted. Fink has won the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology (1981), the Genetics Society of America Medal, (1982), the Emil Christian Hansen Award for Microbiology (1986), the George W. Beadle Award (2001), and the Gruber Prize in Genetics (2010).Gerald R. Fink
/ref> In 2020 he was awarded the

Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal is awarded by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for lifetime contributions to the field of genetics. The medal is named after Thomas Hunt Morgan, the 1933 Nobel Prize winner, who received this award for his work wi ...

by the Genetics Society of America. Fink is the husband of Rosalie Fink, an educator and author of books on learning disabilities. They have two daughters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fink, Gerald Cornell University faculty 1940 births Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Whitehead Institute faculty 21st-century American biologists Members of the National Academy of Medicine Members of the American Philosophical Society Amherst College alumni