Dieter Söll

Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry

Dieter Söll, Diplom and Ph.D. from Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, faculty member at Yale since 1967: You are a renowned National Academy scientist whose research is focused on understanding and expanding the genetic code, the set of instructions that determines how DNA is translated into proteins. Your colleagues have said that few individuals’ impact has reached as far and continues to accomplish as much, both in terms of basic science, education, and the establishment of an inclusive environment among scientists at the frontiers of RNA science and biochemistry. 

A contributor to more than 660 scientific papers, your research interests have varied widely from genetics, molecular biology, and genomics to evolution of protein biosynthesis. As a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of H. Gobin Korana at the University of Wisconsin, you participated in elucidating the genetic code and the central dogma of information flow from DNA sequences to proteins. This experience galvanized your passion for the study of molecular biology and forged your future path. 

One of your most significant contributions has been your discovery of the mechanism by which transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are charged with their cognate amino acids. As you have written, “Spellbound by the genetic code and by tRNA, I would never lose interest in this molecule, and it guided my research for the next five decades.” 

In later related work, you have studied the origins of the genetic code, its translation machinery, and new ways of expanding it. With your lab members you have developed methods to selectively incorporate new amino acids into proteins in living cells, which has had important applications in biotechnology and medicine.

Early in your career, you and other scientists had concerns about the potential dangers of genetic-engineering research, particularly experiments using hybrid molecules, which ultimately led to federal guidelines for genetic research. In the 1980s, while working as chair of the International Advisory Committee for DNA Sequence Databases, you advocated adoption of a common computer database and format for recording masses of genetic information gleaned in the worldwide initiative to decipher the entire human genome. 

You deserve special recognition for your achievements in scientific mentoring and education. While you have been a mentor to scores of graduate and undergraduate students and postdoctoral fellows, you have gone beyond even this. In 1971, you approached industry partners to fund an Industry Summer Research Program at Yale, which welcomed ten students from historically Black colleges and from the University of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez. The success of this program, along with your active lobbying at the National Science Foundation, became a model for other educational institutions and for the formal NSF program that thrives to this day. 

This and subsequent activities led to two awards: Tougaloo College’s Minority Access to Research Careers Award (2001) and a Bouchet Leadership Award Medal in Minority Graduate Education (2002). Your other honors, in addition to election to the National Academy of Sciences, include a 1988 Humboldt Preis Senior Distinguished Scientist Award and, later, your election as a Humboldt Fellow. 

This June, as you retire, there will be a “Söllfest”—a grand gathering where your students and postdocs from all over the world will come together to celebrate all you have given to them and to science. Their presence is sure to be testimony to the depth of your accomplishments and the reach of your success—for which your university proudly offers you profound homage and gratitude.