彼得·阿格雷1949—

Peter Courtland Agre (; born January 30, 1949) is a Nobel Laureate American physician, molecular biologist, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. In 2003, Agre and Roderick MacKinnon shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes." Agre was recognized for his discovery of aquaporin water channels. Aquaporins are water-channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. In 2009, Agre was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and became active in science diplomacy.

Biography

Agre was born in Northfield, Minnesota and is the second of six children to parents of Norwegian and Swedish descent. Agre is a Lutheran. Fascinated by international travel after a high school camping trip through the Soviet Union, Agre was an inconsistent student until he developed an interest in science from his father who was a college chemistry professor.

Agre graduated from Roosevelt High School (Minnesota) before he received his B.A. in Chemistry from Augsburg University in Minneapolis and his M.D. in 1974 from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. From 1975 to 1978, he completed his clinical training in Internal Medicine at Case Western Reserve University's Case Medical Center under Charles C.J. Carpenter.

Awards and recognition

In addition to the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Agre was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2000, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, the American Philosophical Society in 2004, the National Academy of Medicine in 2005, and the American Society for Microbiology in 2011. Agre has received 19 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including Japan, Norway, Greece, Mexico, Hungary, and the United States.

Biomedical research

As a Johns Hopkins medical student in the early 1970s, Agre worked in the labs of Brad Sack and Pedro Cuatrecasas where he investigated the enterotoxin-induced diarrhea that caused dehydration and death of small children in developing countries. After clinical training, Agre joined Vann Bennett's lab in the Cell Biology Department at Johns Hopkins where he studied red cell membranes and identified spectrin deficiency as a common cause of hereditary spherocytosis, a hemolytic anemia with fragile, spherically shaped red cells. In 1984, Agre joined the Department of Medicine, where he built his own research program and first isolated the 32 kilodalton core subunit of the Rhesus blood group antigen, RhD.

Science diplomacy

While serving from 2009 to 2011 as president and chair of the board of advisors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Agre became very active in the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy. Working with AAAS Chief International Officer, Vaughan Turekian, and former Scientific Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State, Norman P. Neureiter, Agre led a series of science diplomacy visits to countries with adversarial relationships to the U.S. The objective of each trip was to foster exchanges and collaborations on peaceful scientific projects and thereby reduce tensions.

Cuba

The governments of Cuba and the US have maintained a hostile relationship made worse by the embargo that prevented the import of essential goods, equipment and even medicines.

Political activism

Thomas Butler Case

As Chairman of the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Agre led a group of prominent scientists that defended Thomas C. Butler, an infectious disease researcher from Texas Tech University who in January 2003 voluntarily reported to the university safety office that 30 vials of plague bacteria were missing and had probably been autoclaved or incinerated. Although Butler cooperated with FBI agents, he was accused of lying and was arrested. When he refused to plead guilty, federal prosecutors charged Butler with many confusing charges concerning grant accounting and sample shipping. Despite support from Agre and other scientists, Butler was convicted in a jury trial, lost his medical license, and served 2 years in prison.