Chemistry
Frances Arnold
Chemical engineer, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 for the directed evolution of enzymes
Born 1956
Photo: Christopher Michel · CC BY-SA 4.0
«Life — the biological world — is the greatest chemist, and evolution is her design process.»
Frances Arnold invented directed evolution, a method that breeds enzymes in the laboratory the way a farmer breeds crops, letting chemists make molecules nature never produced. She is the fifth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Key achievements
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2018, for the directed evolution of enzymes
- Fifth woman ever to win the chemistry Nobel
- Her method makes greener fuels, medicines and detergents
Universities
Pasadena, California
Joined the faculty in 1986 and is now Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry.
Princeton, New Jersey
Took a bachelor's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering in 1979.
Berkeley, California
Took her PhD in chemical engineering in 1985.
Facts
- Before graduate school she drove taxis in Pittsburgh, worked in a jazz club and built solar energy systems in Brazil and Korea.
- Her enzymes are used industrially to make laundry detergents, fuels and medicines with far less waste than classical chemistry.
- She retracted a 2019 paper herself after her group could not reproduce the results, and said publicly that she was embarrassed but that it was the right thing to do.