Alfred G. Gilman

Alfred Goodman Gilman (July 1, 1941 – December 23, 2015) was an American pharmacologist and biochemist. He and Martin Rodbell shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells."

Gilman was the son of Alfred Gilman, who co-authored Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics with Louis S. Goodman, from whom his middle name came. He earned a BA in biology with major in biochemistry from Yale University. Immediately after graduation in 1962, he worked with Allan Conney at Burroughs Wellcome & Company, which resulted in the publication of his first two technical papers. Persuaded by Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., he joined Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine for an MD–PhD course. He obtained his degree in 1969. He then went to the National Institutes of Health to work with Marshall Nirenberg between 1969 and 1971.

Gilman became assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1971, and full professor in 1977. He chaired the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas from 1981. Upon his retirement in 2009, he was appointed chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. He resigned in 2012. He was the founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals company and the Alliance for Cellular Signaling. From 2005, he was also director of Eli Lilly and Company.

G proteins are a vital intermediary between the extracellular activation of receptors (G protein-coupled receptors) on the cell membrane and actions within the cell. Rodbell had shown in the 1960s that GTP was involved in cell signaling. It was Gilman who actually discovered the proteins that interacted with the GTP to initiate signalling cascades within the cell, and thus, giving the name G proteins.

For his works, he received the Canada Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1984, Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1989, in addition to Nobel Prize. He was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, and, since 2013 (or earlier), member of the advisory council of the National Center for Science Education.