Peter Bartlett Moore

Sterling Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry

Peter Moore, B.S. Yale University, Ph.D. Harvard University, Postdoctoral research at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology and at the University of Geneva, and faculty member at Yale since 1969:  You are a superb contributor and citizen in both Chemistry and MB&B, and a creative leader in the use of a wide range of biophysical methods. 

For more than four decades you have been a pillar of the ribosome research community pursuing mechanistic and structural insights into function of this largest of macromolecular machines.  You used pioneering neutron scattering methods developed by yourself and Don Engelman, to position the proteins of the 30S ribosomal subunit in three dimensions.  You then proceeded to use NMR and x-ray crystallographic methods to obtain more detailed atomic views of the ribosome machine and many of its protein and RNA components. These studies and other scholarly activities have resulted in 200 publications and placed you in the first rank of world scientists.  In recognition of your distinguished accomplishments you were elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and have received the Rosenstiel Award and the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize.

Beyond your truly distinguished scholarship, you an articulate teacher who has taught at every level, from freshman general chemistry to the most advanced graduate courses and have been a caring and contributing citizen of both the University and outside scientific communities. Among your long list of services to the University are your chairmanship of the Department of Chemistry as well as your participation on the University Budget Committee, the Faculty Restructuring Committee and the Science Facilities Planning Committee. You have been a loyal contributor to the Biophysics community over your career and have now assumed the presidency of the Biophysical Society and Chair of the Biophysics Section of the National Academy of Sciences. The biophysics community would not function as well as it does without having had your tireless efforts over the years. 

All of these are the facts.  But none of these capture your inimitable personality, Peter Moore.  A Bostonian by birth, high school student at Milton Academy, your natural course would have been to become an undergraduate at Harvard.  But you have been known, on occasion, to be a contrarian – and Yale in this case is the lucky and happy beneficiary of that.  From your undergraduate years on, you have been a devoted and loyal partisan, as well as a trenchant critic, of your university, always striving to make it better and working mightily to get it up to the scientific mark. The sight of a “Memo from Moore” might make an administrator flinch before opening.  But it is always received with the understanding that you write because you care, and what you say you say with point, out of passionate conviction and never with any ill will.   Sailor and Fisherman, your university is proud of you for continually fishing in the deepest seas and thanks you mightily for always searching for the BIG FISH, both in and out of the ocean.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans