Marshall Receives Nobel Prize

MARSHALL SCHOLAR WINS NOBEL PRIZE

Roger Y. Tsien, a 1972 Marshall Scholar who is a professor of pharmacology at the University of California at San Diego, is among the three recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Tsien and two other scientists received the award for their work in utilizing the ability of jellyfish to glow for the purpose of observing the movement of living cells and the proteins within them.

After graduating from Harvard in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and physics, Tsien used his Marshall Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge in England, where he received his Ph.D. in physiology five years later.  After a fellowship at Cambridge, Tsien joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, and then moved to the University of California at San Diego in 1989.

"The Marshall Scholarship started me on the intellectual path that eventually led to the Nobel Prize I received this week. The intellectual autonomy that I was given as a research student at the University of Cambridge allowed me to start the unusual interdisciplinary approach that I have pursued ever since," Tsien said.  "As a program that values and rewards exceptional intellectual achievement, character, and contribution to society, the Marshall Scholarship furthers progress in America and strengthens our ties with the United Kingdom."

Founded by a 1953 act of the U.K. Parliament, and named in honor of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Marshall Scholarships commemorate the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan and they express the continuing gratitude of the British people to their American counterparts.

Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a degree in the United Kingdom.  Up to 40 Scholars are selected each year to study at graduate level at an U.K. institution in any field of study.  Generally the scholarship is held for two years.

As future leaders, with a lasting understanding of British society, Marshall Scholars strengthen the enduring relationship between the British and American peoples, their governments and their institutions.