George Emil Palade

George Emil Palade (born November 19, 1912) is a Romanian cell biologist. In 1974, he shared with two colleagues the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.

George Palade received a M.D. in 1940 from the School of Medicine of the University of Bucharest, Romania. He was a member of the faculty of that school until 1945 when he went to the United States for postdoctoral studies. There, he joined Prof. Albert Claude at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1952, Palade became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He was a professor at the Rockefeller Institute (1958-1973), Yale University Medical School (1973-1990), and University of California, San Diego (1990-present).

He won the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for describing the structure and function of organelles in cells

In 1986, he received the National Medal of Science, USA.

At the Rockefeller Institute, Palade used electron microscopy to study the internal organization of such cell structures as mitochondria, chloroplasts, the Golgi apparatus, and others. His most important discovery was related to ribosomes.

His name has become attached to the Weibel-Palade bodies (a storage organelle unique to the endothelium, containing von Willebrand factor and various proteins) which he described together with the Swiss anatomist Ewald R. Weibel (Weibel ER, Palade GE. New cytoplasmic components in arterial endothelia. J Cell Biol 1964;23:101-112).

External links

• Autobiography written in 1974 for the Nobel Prize
• Professor Palade's current webpage at University of California, San Diego