John Michael Bishop (born February 22, 1936) is an American immunologist and

microbiologist A microbiologist (from Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, fungi, and some types of para ...

who shared the 1989

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accordi ...

with Harold E. Varmus and was co-winner of 1984

Alfred P. Sloan Prize The Alfred P. Sloan Prize is an award given each year, starting in 2003, to a film at the Sundance Film Festival. The prize is given to a feature film that focuses on science or technology as a theme, or depicts a scientist, engineer, or mathemati ...

. He serves as an active faculty member at the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It ...

(

UCSF The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It con ...

), where he also served as chancellor from 1998 to 2009.Autobiography on UCSF Website

/ref>National Medal of Science details
/ref>

Education and early life

Bishop was born in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. He attended

Gettysburg College Gettysburg College is a private liberal arts college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1832, the campus is adjacent to the Gettysburg Battlefield. Gettysburg College has about 2,600 students, with roughly equal numbers of men and women. ...

as an undergraduate, where he was a brother of the Theta-Pi Zeta chapter of

Lambda Chi Alpha Lambda Chi Alpha (), commonly known as Lambda Chi, is a college fraternity in North America which was founded at Boston University in 1909. It is one of the largest social fraternities in North America, with more than 300,000 lifetime members a ...

fraternity. He later attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, where he earned an MD in 1962.

Career

Bishop began his career working for the

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's ...

, a part of 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 ...

. He then spent a year working for the

Heinrich Pette Institute The Leibniz Institute of Virology was founded in 1948 by Heinrich Pette, a German neurologist. It began as a research facility to create a Poliomyelitis, polio vaccine. It is now a private foundation and involved with basic research in virology an ...

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

before joining the faculty of the

in 1968. Bishop has remained on the school's faculty since 1968, and was chancellor of the university from 1998 to 2009. He is director of the Bishop Lab. He became the eighth chancellor of UCSF in 1998. He oversaw one of UCSF's major transition and growth periods, including the expanding Mission Bay development and philanthropic support recruitment. During his tenure, he unveiled the first comprehensive, campus-wide, strategic plan to promote diversity and foster a supportive work environment. During this time, UCSF also adopted a new mission: ''advancing health worldwide''™.

Research

Much of this work was conducted jointly with Harold Varmus in a notably long scientific partnership. Their best-known accomplishment was the identification of a cellular gene (c-src) that gave rise to the v-src oncogene of Rous Sarcoma Virus, a cancer-causing virus first isolated from a chicken sarcoma by

Peyton Rous Francis Peyton Rous () (October 5, 1879 – February 16, 1970) was an American pathologist at the Rockefeller University known for his works in oncoviruses, blood transfusion and physiology of digestion. A medical graduate from the Johns Hopki ...

in 1910. Their discovery triggered the identification of many other cellular proto-oncogenes—progenitors of viral oncogenes and targets for mutations that drive human cancers.

Awards and honors

Bishop is best known for his Nobel-winning work on

retroviral A retrovirus is a type of virus that inserts a DNA copy of its RNA genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell. Once inside the host cell's cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse transcriptas ...

oncogenes An oncogene is a gene that has the potential to cause cancer. In tumor cells, these genes are often mutated, or expressed at high levels.

. Working with Harold E. Varmus in the 1980s, he discovered the first human oncogene,

c-Src Proto-oncogene tyrosine-protein kinase Src, also known as proto-oncogene c-Src, or simply c-Src (cellular Src; pronounced "sarc", as it is short for sarcoma), is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase protein that in humans is encoded by the ''SRC'' gene ...

. Their findings allowed the understanding of how malignant

tumor A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...

s are formed from changes to the normal

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "... Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a b ...

s of a

cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...

. These changes can be produced by viruses, by radiation, or by exposure to some chemicals. Bishop is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

, and 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 ...

. Bishop is also a recipient of

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

in 2003. That same year, his book "How to win the Nobel Prize: An Unexpected Life in Science" was published. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2008. In 2020, Bishop received from the

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

Academic Senate the Clark Kerr Award for distinguished leadership in higher education.

Archival collections

The University of California, San Francisco Archives and Special Collections houses a collection of J. Michael Bishop papers, including his laboratory research notebooks, writings, photographs, and other material.Calisphere J. Michael Bishop Collection: https://calisphere.org/collections/26395/

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bishop, J. Michael 21st-century American biologists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American immunologists American microbiologists American Nobel laureates American virologists Gettysburg College alumni Harvard Medical School alumni Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine National Medal of Science laureates University of California, San Francisco faculty 1936 births Living people People from York, Pennsylvania Foreign Members of the Royal Society Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research Members of the American Philosophical Society Members of the National Academy of Medicine