Roger guillemin

Roger Guillemin, (Dijon, France on January 11, 1924), studied medicine at the University of Lyon. He moved to Canada to study Experimental Surgery, later he moved to the United States becoming a naturalized citizen and settled in Houston. He was a professor of physiology at Baylor University. In 1970 he joined the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

Biography and scientific contributions

Roger Guillemin was the son of a mechanic from Dijon, Raymond Guillemin (1890-1973) and Blanche Rigollot (1900-1992).

After completing his baccalaureate at the Lycée Carnot in Dijon, he began studying medicine in 1943 at the University of Burgundy. In 1948, he established himself as a general practitioner in Saint-Seine-l'Abbaye. Guillemin received his doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon in 1949 and that same year he took a special interest in endocrinology, influenced by his professors P. Étienne -Martin and J. Charpy, and attended Hans Selye's lectures on stress in Paris.

He later moved to Canada, to the University of Montreal (Quebec), where he defended his scientific thesis and worked at the Institute of Surgery and Experimental Medicine directed by Hans Selye where he received his doctorate in 1953. That same year he moved to United States to join the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas), where he taught physiology for 17 years (1953-1970).

In 1965, he became a US citizen. Later, in 1970, he moved to the Salk Institute (San Diego, California), where he helped create the neuroendocrinology laboratory.

He was a member of the Council of the American Society of Endocrinology from 1969 to 1973 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974.

In 1975, he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. He was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Andrew Victor Schally and Rosalyn Yalow) for their discoveries of neurohormones {production of peptide hormones by the brain}, particularly the identification of TRH and GnRH and their role in the release of FSH and LH.

Professor Guillemin's research has revealed the relationship between the central nervous system and the main endocrine functions. His work has led to considerable development in neuroendocrinology by opening up a whole new field of exploration.

He has served as interim president of the Salk Institute in La Jolla.

Retired from the Whittier Institute in 1994, Roger Guillemin remains very active as an international speaker and scientific advisor to industry.

Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally discovered the structures of TRH and GnRH in different laboratories. The process of this scientific discovery in Guillemin's laboratory is the subject of a study by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, published as Laboratory Life.

Guillemin signed, along with other Nobel laureates, a petition for a delegation from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child to visit a Tibetan boy who has been under house arrest in China since 1995, namely Gendun Chökyi Nyima, recognized as the 11th Panchen Lama by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

Realizing the relationship between the arts and sciences, Roger Guillemin has pursued a career as a painter since 1989.