Efraim Racker

He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received an S.B. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and a Ph.D. from the same university in 1969.

Dr. Weinberg is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his undergraduate and graduate training at MIT and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weizmann Institute, Israel, and the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California. Dr. Weinberg studies the molecular basis of cancer - how normal cells become transformed into cancer cells - and his laboratory has been responsible for a number of seminal discoveries that have furthered our understanding of cancer biology. These include the identification of the first human oncogene, Ras, the discovery of the Neu oncogene which is now felt to be an early participant in the development of breast cancer, and discovery of the first anti-oncogene, the Retinoblastoma gene product His current studies continue to extend our understanding of the regulation of the ras family of oncogenes (found in human cancers of the bone marrow, bladder, breast, skin, lung, colon, and the brain) and activity of the retinoblastoma gene.

Dr. Weinberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His honors and awards include Discover MagazineScientist of the Year for 1982, the Armand Hammer Cancer Prize, the Bristol-Myers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research, and the Sloan Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation.