Roberts, Richard John (1943-…), is a British biologist who made important discoveries about how the hereditary material DNA is organized in genes. For his work, Roberts shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with American biologist Phillip A. Sharp. The two scientists made similar discoveries working independently.
Until the mid-1970’s, biologists believed that DNA was an uninterrupted string of genes. In 1977, Roberts and Sharp separately discovered split genes, genes in which active segments of DNA are interrupted by inactive segments. The inactive segments, called introns, do not contain genetic instructions. Many scientists believe that split genes and introns play a role in creating genetic variations. The discovery has also given scientists a better understanding of how some hereditary diseases develop.
Roberts was born in Derby, England on Sept. 6, 1943. He received a B.Sc. from Sheffield University in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1968, both degrees in chemistry. He moved to the United States in 1969 to take a research fellowship in biochemistry at Harvard University. He joined the staff of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York, in 1971. There he served first as a research associate in biochemistry, then as a senior staff investigator, and later as assistant director for research.
Roberts left Cold Spring Harbor in 1992 to direct research at New England Biolabs in Beverly, Massachusetts. New England Biolabs is a private company that makes chemicals used in genetic engineering and research, particularly restriction enzymes. In 2014, he joined the faculty at Northeastern University in Boston. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2008.
