Howard Martin Temin shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

by
College Directory Columnist

May 7, 2010

Howard Martin Temin was born on Monday, December 10, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America. He was second of three sons of Annette Lehman Temin and Henry Temin. His father was a lawyer, and in his autobiography he says his mother was an active woman in civic affairs, especially educational ones.

At an early age Howard showed aptitude for science. He was interested in biology and as a student at Central High School in Philadelphia he was accepted into the summer research program at Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. He spent four summers there learning about the world of biological research.

After graduation from high school, Howard enrolled at Swathmore College in Pennsylvania where he received his bachelor's degree in 1955.

After a summer at the Jackson Laboratory, he became a graduate student in biology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where he received his doctorate in 1959.

Howard Martin Temin published his first scientific paper at the age of eighteen and was described in his college yearbook as "one of the future giants in experimental biology."

Along with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore, Howard Martin Temin discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Temin made a revolutionary description of how tumor viruses act on the genetic material of the cell through reverse transcription.

He used his national prominence as a position from which to attack smoking as the major environmental contributor to human cancer.

Besides the Nobel Prize, he has received many honors and numerous awards in recognition of his work including nine honorary degrees. The discovery of reverse transcriptase is one of the most important of the modern era of medicine. Temin received the National Medal of Science in 1992.

Temin's wife Rayla was also a geneticist. Temin's brother Peter is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics at MIT, and was formerly the head of the Economics Department.

He died on Wednesday, February 09, 1994, in Madison at the age of 59 from lung cancer, although he himself was never a smoker. He and his colleagues were developing a chimeric derivative of HIV as a potential vaccine for HIV when he died.

Around the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, Howard Temin was a well-recognized figure. Everyday he walked or biked to and from work along the same path following the lakeshore. In 1998, the University dedicated the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path in his honor.