Roger Y. Tsien

Roger Yonchien Tsien (Chinese: 錢永健) (born February 1, 1952) is an American biochemist. He is a professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diegoand was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry "for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) with two other chemists: Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Osamu Shimomura of Boston University and Marine Biological Laboratory.

Education and early life

Tsien was born in New York, in 1952. He grew up in Livingston, New Jersey and attended Livingston High School there.

Tsien suffered from asthma as a child, and as a result, he was often indoors. He spent hours conducting chemistry experiments in his basement laboratory. When he was 16, he won first prize in the nationwide Westinghouse talent search with a project investigating how metals bind to thiocyanate.

He attended Harvard University on a National Merit Scholarship, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and physics in 1972. According to his freshman-year roommate, economist and Iowa politician Herman Quirmbach, “It’s probably not an exaggeration to say he’s the smartest person I ever met... [a]nd I have met a lot of brilliant people.”