Joan Steitz on Relationship with Jim Watson
  Joan Steitz     Biography    
Recorded: 04 Aug 2003

I never felt I was a colleague. I still feel like a student. But I think this is typical. I think it’s very, very difficult for anybody who is a student to ever overcome that. You know, I still have, you know, somewhat of the same feelings about other people who were professors at Harvard when I was a student even though they’re not terribly much older than I am.

Joan Steitz is a prominent molecular biologist who earned her Ph.D. under Jim Watson at Harvard University in 1967. She joined the faculty at Yale University in 1970 and is currently the Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and the Director of the Molecular Genetics Program at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine at Yale. She is also an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Steitz’s research involves determining the structure and function of small RNA-protein complexes.

She has received numerous awards including the National Medal of Science (1986), the Weizmann Women and Science Award (1994), the Novartis Drew Award in Biomedical Research (1999), the UNESCO-L'Oréal Women in Science Award (2001), and the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research (2002).