CSHL - Rich Roberts

Rich Roberts (1943-) came to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1972, where he studied restriction enzymes. He isolated and purified over 100 such molecules creating the tools needed for recombinant DNA technology.

During a twenty-year career at CSHL, Roberts became the Assistant Director of Research.

In 1977, he and his group along with a group at MIT, headed by Phil Sharp, discovered the phenomenon of RNA splicing, a fundamental principle of gene structure.

In 1993, Roberts and Phil Sharp shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "for their discoveries of split genes". [Nobelprize.org]