Rosenstiel director Haber wins medal for lifetime achievements in genetics

James E. Haber, the director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center and Abraham and Etta Goodman Professor of Biology, has been named 2011 recipient of the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for lifetime contributions in the field of genetics.

R. Scott Hawley, president of the Genetics Society of America (GSA), said in informing Haber of the medal that “it recognizes the entire corpus of your seminal, innovative and critical studies of recombination and repair, especially as they relate to genome instability. In addition to your enormous scientific achievement, the Board of Directors of the GSA also recognize your very distinguished record as a scholar and mentor. Many of your former students and post-docs have gone on to become leaders in their fields, and you are widely recognized as a superb colleague and teacher.”

The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal is named after the 1933 Nobel Prize winner, who received the Nobel for his work with Drosophila and his "discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity." Morgan’s studies provided the first experimental evidence that chromosomes are the carriers of genetic information. Subsequent studies in his laboratory led to the discovery of recombination and the first genetic maps.

Previous winners include such luminaries as Barbara McClintock and Ed Lewis, both Nobel laureates. View the complete list of past award recipients.