Exciting news today: Stanley Falkow, PhD, has been awarded the 2015 National Medal of Science. The honor was announced today by the White House. Falkow is being recognized for his pioneering work in studying how bacteria can cause human disease and how antibiotic resistance is transmitted.
Dr. Falkow is deeply deserving of this award. He has made invaluable contributions to the field of microbiology and the effect of bacteria on human health. We at Stanford Medicine are extremely proud and honored that he has been recognized by his peers in this way.
Falkow, 81, is an emeritus professor of microbiology and immunology and a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute. The award will be presented in a ceremony at the White House in January 2016.
Falkow is well known for his work on extrachromosomal elements called plasmids and their role in antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity in humans and animals. As a graduate student in the 1960s, he discovered that bacteria gained their resistance to antibiotics by sharing their genes much more promiscuously then had been thought possible. When Falkow arrived at Stanford in 1981, he set aside his study of plasmids to concentrate on how organisms as diverse as cholera, plague and whooping cough cause disease in humans. Along the way he's mentored countless students and spoken out about the growing threat of antibiotic resistance due to the routine use of antibiotic in animal feed.
As Falkow, who learned of the award on Dec. 19 in an email from John Holdren, PhD, the president’s chief science advisor, said in our announcement:
It was a total surprise. I always say, ‘In science, it’s not ‘I,’ it’s ‘we.’ And it’s so true. There are hundreds of students and colleagues around the world with whom I’d like to share this honor.
I had the honor of writing about Falkow's work in 2008, when he was awarded the Lasker-Koshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with him and I'm so happy for today's announcement.
Previously: National Medal of Science winner Lucy Shapiro: "It's the most exciting thing in the world to be a scientist", Stanford’s Lucy Shapiro receives National Medal of Science and FDA changes regulation for antibiotic use in animals
Photo by Krista Conger