Two LBL researchers, Sung-Hou Kim, director of the Structural Biology Division, and chemist Judith Klinman of Structural Biology were among the 60 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year. Both Kim and Klinman are professors in the Chemistry Department at UC Berkeley.
Election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences is considered to be one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer. This year's additions bring the total active membership to 1,710. There are also now 300 foreign NAS associates with the addition of 15 new members from 10 different countries.
Kim, 56, has been internationally acclaimed for his pioneering use of x-ray crystallography to identify critical structures in cancer-related and other biologically important proteins. Born in Taegu, Korea, he became a U.S. citizen in 1973 at the age of 35. He earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 1966, and served short stints with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University before joining the UC Berkeley faculty in 1978. He joined LBL a year later.
A former Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow and a UCB Miller Research Professor, Kim has garnered more than a dozen international awards, including the E.O. Lawrence Award in 1987. Earlier this year, he was also elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Klinman, 53, is highly regarded for her research into the chemical changes that take place when an enzyme catalyzes a reaction. Like Kim, she came to Berkeley in 1978, and she, too, has won numerous awards. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and Miller Research Professor, and has been elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She earned her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, and spent several years with the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia, the city in which she was born.