Rodbell, Martin (1925-1998), was an American biochemist who discovered proteins that control how living cells communicate with each other and how they respond to external influences. In the early 1970’s, Rodbell theorized that substances he called G-proteins help relay the signals a cell receives from other cells or from influences outside the body, such as light or odor. He named the substances G-proteins because they bind to compounds called guanosine triphosphate, one of the smaller chemical units known as nucleotides that make up the hereditary material DNA. At that time, most scientists rejected Rodbell’s theory. In 1977, however, American physician Alfred G. Gilman proved that G-proteins did, in fact, exist and played the role Rodbell had outlined for them. For their work, Rodbell and Gilman shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
Rodbell was born in Baltimore on Dec. 1, 1925. He received a B.A. degree in biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1949 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Washington in 1954.
After completing his education, Rodbell worked as a research associate in biochemistry at the University of Illinois from 1954 to 1956. In 1956, he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, as a biochemical researcher. He became chief of the Laboratory of Nutrition and Endocrinology at NIH in the early 1970’s. In 1985, he moved to another federal agency, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He worked there until he retired in 1994, becoming a scientist emeritus. He died on Dec. 7, 1998.
