Louise Chow

Louise Chow is a professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a foreign associate with the National Academy of Sciences, known for her research on the human papillomavirus.^[1] Her research contributed to the discovery of gene splicing, and in 1993, her collaborator, Richard J. Roberts, received the Nobel Prize for the research,^[2] leading some to assert that Chow should have received the honor as well.^[3]

Career

Chow was born in Hunan Province, China. She studied agricultural chemistry at National Taiwan University, graduating in 1965, before moving to California to pursue graduate studies in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where she earned her Ph.D in 1973.^[2] She joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1975 studying gene regulation, eventually leading to the discovery of RNA splicing. In 1984, she took a job with the University of Rochester School of Medicine, studying the genome of the human papillomavirus. Chow became a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1993, studying genetics and virology, focusing on diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and AIDS.^[2]

Nobel Prize

In 1993, her collaborator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Richard J. Roberts, was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with researcher Phillip Sharp, for the discovery of RNA splicing. Roberts called the award a "tribute" to his co-workers, including Chow.^[4] However, other scientists felt that Chow, who operated the electron microscope that allowed researchers to observe the splicing process, should have been included among the scientists awarded the Nobel Prize for the research. Chow told the Boston Globe that her contributions "were not trivial… it was a new type of experiment and needed to be designed and set up."^[5]

References