Werner Arber

Werner Arber is a Swiss microbiologist and geneticist who discovered restriction endonucleases, enzymes that cut DNA at specific recognition sequences, through work carried out mainly during the 1960s on bacteriophage and bacterial systems. This discovery, made alongside related work by Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans, gave molecular biologists a precise tool for cutting DNA at defined sites and became one of the foundational techniques underlying recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering. Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Smith and Nathans for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics. He trained in chemistry and physics at ETH Zurich before earning his doctorate at the University of Geneva in 1958, held research positions at several American universities, and became professor of molecular genetics at Geneva in 1965 before moving to the University of Basel in 1971. Arber later served as president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 2011 to 2017, becoming the first Protestant to hold that position.