Carol Widney Greider
Carol Widney Greider (born April 15, 1961) is an American molecular biologist renowned for her fundamental discoveries on telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Together with Elizabeth Blackburn, she discovered telomerase and demonstrated its essential role in maintaining chromosome ends—an advance crucial to understanding cellular aging, genomic stability, and cancer. Later, with Jack Szostak, she clarified how telomeres protect chromosomes from degradation. For these contributions, Greider shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009. Her work has profoundly shaped molecular biology and biomedical research.
Quotes
- What intrigues basic scientists like me is that anytime we do a series of experiments, there are going to be three or four new questions that come up when you think you've answered one.
- One of the lessons I have learned in the different stages of my career is that science is not done alone. It is through talking with others and sharing that progress is made.
- Federal funding for biomedical sciences plays a critical role in training the next generation of scientists.
- Science can promote an understanding between people at a really fundamental level.
- It takes years to realize the multiple benefits of science; without adequate, sustained funding for research, the careers of many bright, young scientists may come to a screeching halt.