Day: 2010-02-19

Friday Hoyden: Elizabeth Blackburn, Nobel Laureate

My daughter’s school science department organised for our Year 10 students to go to a speech given by Dr Blackburn at the inner-east Moriah College yesterday. They were thrilled by her clever slide presentation and the passion she conveyed for her work. Dr Blackburn was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for her joint discovery of Telomarese, an enzyme that replenishes a protective structure at the end of chromosomes called the telomere, an enzyme with exciting implications for the study of cancer and human longevity.