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Michael Smith
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OverviewAI-generated
Michael Smith (1932–2000) was a Canadian chemist, biochemist, and geneticist who worked as a university teacher. Born in Blackpool, he was educated at the University of Manchester and later employed by the University of British Columbia. His professional interests included chemistry, with a primary field of work in molecular biology and biochemistry. Smith was an atheist who spoke English.
He received several prestigious honors, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Canada Gairdner International Award, and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and was a member of the Royal Society, the European Molecular Biology Organization, and the National Academy of Sciences. Smith died in Vancouver in 2000.
Synthesized by Vinony from 24 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Nobel Prize
- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry1993
“for his fundamental contributions to the establishment of oligonucleotide-based, site-directed mutagenesis and its development for protein studies”
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Michael
- Family name
- Smith
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Canada
- Place of birth
- Blackpool
- Place of death
- Vancouver
- Occupation
- geneticist
- Employer
- University of British Columbia
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Religion
- atheism
- Field of work
- biochemistry
- Image
- Michael Smith cropped.jpg
Show 7 more facts
- date of birth
- 1932-04-26
- date of death
- 2000-10-04
- member of
- National Academy of Sciences
- name in native language
- Michael Smith
- different from
- Michael J. Smith
- Commons category
- Michael Smith (chemist)
- interested in
- chemistry
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Michael Smith (April 26, 1932 – October 4, 2000) was a British-Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis. Following a PhD in 1956 from the University of Manchester, he undertook postdoctoral research with Har Gobind Khorana (himself a Nobel Prize winner) at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Subsequently, Smith worked at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver before being appointed a professor of biochemistry in the UBC Faculty of Medicine in 1966. Smith's career included roles as the founding director of the UBC Biotechnology Laboratory (1987 to 1995) and the founding scientific leader of the Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence (PENCE). In 1996 he was named Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology. Subsequently, he became the founding director of the Genome Sequencing Centre (now called the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre) at the BC Cancer Research Centre.
Education and early life
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Michael Smith” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.