Joachim Messing
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick
September 10, 1946 - September 13, 2019
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Scientific Discipline: Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2015)
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Joachim Messing was a biologist recognized for work in genomics and biotechnology. The shotgun DNA sequencing method and the M13mp/pUC/JM cloning kits made him the most frequently cited scientist in the world for the eighties. Messing made his innovations freely available, ensuring rapid advances in all life sciences. He helped creating the field of plant genomics with a focus on raising the nutritional quality of food. Messing was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1946, studied Pharmacy at the Free University of Berlin, and received his doctorate degree from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Biochemistry. After studies at the University of California at San Francisco and Davis, he rose through the faculty ranks at the University of Minnesota before becoming a University Professor of Molecular Biology at Rutgers and then the Director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, where he holds also the Waksman Chair in Molecular Genetics. He was winner of the 2013 Wolf Prize in Agriculture and the 2014 Promega Biotechnology Award. Messing, a Fellow of the American Association of the Advancement in Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, was a member of both the US and the German National Academy of Sciences.
