Nobel Prize winner Sidney Altman joins Arizona State faculty

PHOENIX — A Nobel Prize winner has joined the faculty at Arizona State University, the school announced Wednesday.

Sidney Altman, who won a piece of the coveted international award for his work in chemistry in 1989, will be sharing his expertise with the School of Life Sciences.

BREAKING: @NobelPrize Laureate #SidneyAltman to join @asuSOLS: https://t.co/K6GNk8WQcZ pic.twitter.com/UlQYgeTKOs

— ASU Now (@asunews) May 4, 2016

Altman is already familiar with the Tempe campus.

He has visited the university as recently as last year, when he hosted a six-week seminar. He has also maintained a long friendship with ASU professor Lawrence Krauss.

“My friendship with (Krauss) was probably what drew me there,” Altman told ASU News.

Altman’s discovery that ribonucleic acid can act as a catalyst in cell reaction was a breakthrough in the field.

RNA, in part, codes and decodes genes.

The Canadian-born Altman has worked at Yale, Harvard and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

He will be the third Nobel Laureate who has worked at the school.

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