Jonathan G. Seidman is the Henrietta B. and Frederick H. Bugher Foundation Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He operates a joint lab with his wife, Christine Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease.

Career

Jonathan Seidman grew up in

Norwalk, Connecticut , image_map = Fairfield County Connecticut incorporated and unincorporated areas Norwalk highlighted.svg , mapsize = 230px , map_caption = Location in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Fairfield County and ...

and went to high school in Ghana. He studied biochemistry at Harvard University, graduating in 1971. In 1975, he completed his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin. After doing postdoctoral research at the National Institute of Health in the lab of Philip Leder, he began working at Harvard Medical School in 1981. He is now the Henrietta B. and Frederick H. Bugher Foundation Professor of Genetics. He was a

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

investigator from 1988-2005. The Seidman lab researches the genetics involved in diseases such as

hypertrophic cardiomyopathy Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM, or HOCM when obstructive) is a condition in which the heart becomes thickened without an obvious cause. The parts of the heart most commonly affected are the interventricular septum and the ventricles. This r ...

, and was recognized for discovering the first genetic cause of congenital heart defects. Beginning in 2009, the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology has awarded the Seidman Prize for MD Research Mentorship in honor of him and his wife.

Personal life

Seidman's parents were

Ann Seidman Ann Willcox Seidman (30 April 1926 – 13 August 2019) was an American economist, active in African liberation struggles, and a writer and university professor. Background Ann Willcox Seidman was raised in New York city - her parents were enginee ...

and Robert B. Seidman, respectively an economist and law and development scholar. The Seidmans were among several who established one of the first interracial planned communities on the East Coast of the US, at Village Creek in Norwalk, Connecticut in the 1950s. Jonathan Seidman and some of his four siblings were born there. The settlement exists to this day. The family then moved around Africa, teaching at the University of Ghana and other institutions. Seidman met his wife, Christine Seidman, while they were students at Harvard, and they were married in 1973. They operate a joint lab at Harvard and are both founding members of MyoKardia. In 2002, they shared the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cardiovascular Research. They have three children.

Awards

* 2002 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award * 2007 Elected to the

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 Nati ...

* 2007 Elected to the National Academy of Medicine * 2008 Katz Prize in Cardiovascular Research, Columbia University

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seidman, Jonathan Living people People from Norwalk, Connecticut Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Members of the National Academy of Medicine American geneticists Harvard University alumni Harvard Medical School faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Year of birth missing (living people)