Elizabeth Blackburn AC (b. 1948) shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009, becoming the first Australian woman Nobel laureate. Through her research, Blackburn discovered the molecular structure of telomeres, and co-discovered the enzyme telomerase, offering hope for cancer treatment and clues to the mystery of ageing. Born in Hobart, the child of two doctors, she gained her master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Melbourne before receiving her PhD from Cambridge in the early 1970s, and undertaking postdoctoral work at Yale in 1975. She joined the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of California in Berkeley in 1978. At a conference in 1980, she announced her discovery of a repeated DNA sequence at the ends of chromosomes of a single-celled organism. Since then she has unravelled the mystery of the telomere, a protective structure or 'cap' at the end of the chromosome. As organisms age, the telomeres fray and degrade, like the ends of shoelaces. In 1984 she, Carol Greider, who had been her doctoral student, and Jack Szostack confirmed the existence of an enzyme, telomerase, which replenishes the telomere. Blackburn moved to the University of California, San Francisco in 1990, where she is now Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and Biophysics. In 2001 she was appointed to the President's Council on Bioethics, but after criticising the stance of the Bush administration on embryonic stem cell science she was controversially dropped. President of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2010 and 2011, she has received the Heineken Prize, the Lasker Award and the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science as well as the Nobel Prize. From 2015 to 2018, she was the President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Blackburn continues to study the effects of stress on telomerase and whether lifestyle interventions can promote telomere repair, and shared her findings in her 2017 book The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger. She is a mentor to other research scientists and a strong advocate for women forging a career in science.
