Joan A. Steitz

Joan Elaine Argetsinger Steitz is an American biochemist and molecular biologist, born on January 26, 1941, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She grew up in Minnesota in the 1950s and 1960s and received a degree in chemistry from Antioch College in Ohio, where she first became interested in molecular biology as a cooperative intern in a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Director of the Molecular Genetics Program at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine. She is known for discoveries involving RNA, including insights into how ribosomes interact with messenger RNA by complementary base pairing and the finding that introns are spliced by small nuclear ribonucleic proteins, which occur in eukaryotes. In September 2018 she won the Lasker-Koshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science.