Tomas Lindahl, president of the IFOM scientific advisory board, has been awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry

Tomas is the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board that reviews all IFOM scientific activities and has an important voice in new hirings as well as tenure granting.

He was born in Sweden and completed medical studies at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and has consistently been active in research.

He worked as a post-doctoral fellow on nucleic acid biochemistry with J. Fresco at Princeton and G. Edelman at Rockefeller University, joining the faculty of the Karolinska Institute in 1969. He became Professor of Medical Chemistry at the University of Gothenburg in 1978.

In 1981 he left Sweden for the United Kingdom when he was appointed Head of the Mutagenesis Laboratory at the ICRF Mill Hill Laboratories in London.

From 1984 to 2006 he was Director of the Clare Hall Laboratories at ICRF and Cancer Research UK, also serving as Deputy Director of Research.

His direction of Claire Hall made this laboratory famous around the world and one of the most reputable places where research on DNA damage and DNA repair. Amongst many distinctions, Tomas Lindahl is a member of EMBO, a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and of the Royal Society, London.

His work and that of his students served to discover DNA damage and to establish the DNA repair as one of the essential mechanisms of life. It is nice that the Swedish Academy has finally decided to honour him and his colleagues for this great discovery.

He has received many honours and distinctions: he was the Royal Society Croonian Lecturer in 1996 and recipient of the Royal Medal in 2007, obtained the INSERM Prix Etranger in 2009, and the Copley Medal in 2010 of the Royal Society.

He has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Gothenburg, Oslo, Sheffield, and Sussex. He is now Director Emeritus of Cancer Research UK, Clare Hall Laboratories, and still involved in various scientific activities.

Source: IFOM