Joan Steitz

The molecular biologist Joan Steitz is famed for her discoveries involving RNA, one of the three major macromolecules essential for all known forms of life. Growing up in Minnesota, she was fascinated by biology but lacked female role models in the sciences. At Harvard, she was the first female graduate student to join the laboratory of the famed biologist James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule. Throughout her career, her work has centered on the function of RNA in catalytic processes. In 1970, Steitz became an assistant professor at Yale, and within five years had published the groundbreaking research for which she is most famous, demonstrating the complementary base pairing of ribosomes. Her discoveries have blazed new trails for basic molecular biology, and may yield new insights into the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases such as lupus, which develop when patients make antibodies against their own DNA or ribosomes. In 1989, she became the first female recipient of the Warren Triennial Prize, an honor that often precedes Nobel recognition. Today, she is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. In this 1992 address to the Academy of Achievement in Las Vegas, Nevada, she discusses her lifelong interest in science, and the personal challenges she faced as a woman scientist in the 1970s. She urges the Academy's student delegates to make the most of their opportunities, and extols the rewards and satisfactions of teamwork in the sciences.