Werner Arber

Professor Werner Arber was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology in 1978 for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics.

Werner Arber, born 1929, obtained his academic education at the ETH in Zürich and at the University of Geneva, followed by a postdoctoral education in the USA.  From 1960 he was research assistant and later Associate Professor at the University of Geneva.

After one year of being visiting Research Professor at the University of California in Berkeley, he took in 1971 a full professorship for molecular microbiology at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel.

In the period of 1986/88 he was rector of the University of Basel. After his retirement in 1996, he served for three years as the President of the International Council for Science (ICSU).

In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics.

Werner Arber’s research activities concern microbial genetics, horizontal gene transfer, bacterial restriction and modification systems, mobile genetic elements, site-specific recombination, molecular mechanisms of genetic variation and biological evolution.