THOMAS R. CECH
Author: By Alison Bass, Globe Staff
Date: Friday, October 13, 1989
Page: 3
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
If Thomas R. Cech, was surprised that he won this year's Nobel Prize for
Chemistry, his colleagues and mentors were not. There was reason to suspect he
was headed for scientific glory while he was still a schoolboy, winning state
science fairs in Iowa year after year.
Cech, a lanky 41-year-old Colorado resident, reminisced about those early
years while sipping champagne with colleagues at the Whitehead Institute in
Cambridge yesterday. He had just spoken on the phone with a reporter from a
Des Moines newspaper, who remembered that Cech won a science fair in eastern
Iowa while still in junior high. When one of his colleagues asked the topic of
his winning entry, Cech joked, "I don't remember. I was in so many science
fairs."
Cech, born in Chicago, took that all-consuming passion for science to
Grinnell College in Iowa, where he received a BA in chemistry, and then to
the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a doctorate. He
joined the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1978 after
doing a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT.
Many of the scientists who gathered around Cech yesterday remembered him
fondly from his days at MIT.
"He is a spectacular scientist and an absolutely spectacular human being,"
said Robert Horvitz, an MIT professor of biology. "I can't think of a nicer
person to get this award -- he really deserves it -- for the innovation, rigor
and creativity that has marked all his work over the years."
"You can see how well liked he is," said Harvey Lodish, a professor of
biology. "He's a real mensch."
Cech lives in Boulder with his wife, Carol, and his children, Allison, , 7,
and Jennifer, 3.
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