Nobel Laureate Dr. Lee Hartwell has been president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center since 1997. Through his research using the budding yeast essential for brewing beer and baking bread, he has identified genes that control cell division – critical information in understanding the life cycle of cells.

The same genes in yeast have also been found to control cell division in humans and likely to be the site of alteration in cancer. In addition to displaying alterations in cell division, cancer cells, unlike normal cells, also are unstable genetically.

Hartwell was born Oct. 30, 1939, in Los Angeles. In 1961 he earned a B.S. at the California Institute of Technology and in 1964 earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the mentorship of Dr. Boris Magasanik. He engaged in postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies from 1964 through 1965 with Dr. Renato Dulbecco. Hartwell was an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine from 1965-1968. He joined the University of Washington faculty in 1968 and has been a professor of genome sciences there since 1973.

Hartwell is the recipient of many national and international scientific awards, including the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Other honors include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award in cancer research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hartwell lives in Seattle with his wife, Theresa Naujack.