Jesse C. Rabinowitz
University of California, Berkeley
April 28, 1925 - September 9, 2003
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Scientific Discipline: Biochemistry Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1981)
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Jesse Rabinowitz’s scientific career focused on questions related to biochemistry and metabolic processes in bacteria. What he learned about folic acid coenzymes and one carbon metabolism, iron-sulfur proteins, purine degradation, and protein biosynthesis in these bacteria led to fundamental understanding of physiology and disease processes in higher organisms, including humans.
Rabinowitz earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1950 he began a postdoctoral fellowship through the US Public Health Service, which brought him to the University of California, Berkeley. After his fellowship, Rabinowitz joined what was then called the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, where he worked from 1952 until 1957. He left NIH in 1957 for an assistant professorship at UC Berkeley, and he remained on the faculty of UC Berkeley for the rest of his career.
In addition to his appointment at UC Berkeley, Rabinowitz held a position at the University of California Agriculture Experiment Station, where his research had direct applications to nutrition and disease control. Rabinowitz also spent many sabbatical leaves working at research institutions in France. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, and he was an accomplished photographer and musician.
