Alexander Rich

Rich spent his early life in Springfield, Massachusetts. He grew up in a working-class family and worked in the U.S. Armory while he was in high school. From 1943 to 1946, Rich was in the U.S. Navy. He obtained a bachelor's in biochemical sciences from Harvard University in 1947 and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1949. == Academic career ==

At Harvard, Rich studied with John Edsall, who inspired him to pursue an academic career. He stayed in Pauling's group until 1954. Rich worked as a section chief in physical chemistry at the National Institutes of Health from 1954 to 1958. He became a professor at MIT in 1958. He worked diligently at MIT until his death in 2015. He still went into lab until two months before his death. == Contributions to science ==

His work played a pivotal role in the discovery of nucleic acid hybridization. In 1955, Rich and Crick solved the structure of collagen. From 1969 to 1980, he was a biology investigator looking for life on mars with NASA's Viking Mission to Mars. In 1973, Rich's lab determined the structure of tRNA. In 1979, Rich and co-workers at MIT grew a crystal of Z-DNA. After 26 years of attempts, Rich et al. finally crystallised the junction box of B- and Z-DNA. Their results were published in an October 2005 Nature journal. Whenever Z-DNA forms, there must be two junction boxes that allow the flip back to the canonical B-form of DNA. == List of awards and prizes received ==

• a member of the National Academy of Sciences (appointed 17 April 1978) Awards and prizes • Sigma Xi Proctor Prize, Raleigh, NC (2001) • Bower Award and Prize, the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA (2000) • National Medal of Science, Washington, DC (1995) • Linus Pauling Medal, American Chemical Society, Northwest Sections (1995) • Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award in Basic Biomedical Research, Brandeis Univ., Waltham, MA (1983) • James R. Killian Faculty Achievement Award, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1980) • Presidential Award, New York Academy of Science, New York, NY (1977) • Theodore van Karmen Award for Viking Mars Mission, Washington, DC (1976) • Skylab Achievement Award, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC (1974) Academies • Foreign Member, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia (1994) • Honorary Member, Japanese Biochemical Society, Tokyo, Japan (1986) • Foreign Member, French Academy of Sciences, Paris, France (1984) • Honorary Doctorate, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1981) • American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA (1980) • Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1978) • National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (1970) • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC (1965) • Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation (1963) • Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, MA (1959) • Fellow, National Research Council, Washington, DC (1949–51). == References ==