Nobel Laureate Dr. Alfred G. Gilman, former chairman of pharmacology and dean of the UT Southwestern Medical School, died Wednesday after a long illness.
Gilman, who was also a former executive vice president for Academic Affairs and provost at UT Southwestern, was 74 years old.
In 1994, Gilman shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr. Martin Rodbell of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for their discovery of guanine nucleotide-binding regulatory proteins. The proteins, commonly called G proteins, are central to signaling transduction, the process of receiving signals from outside the cell and activating a range of cellular responses.
It is now known that G proteins are found in virtually all cells, and are central to fundamental body processes including vision, smell, hormone secretion, and thinking in humans. Problems in G-protein signaling contribute to a range of diseases, including cholera, whooping cough and cancer.
As a leader in the scientific community, Gilman was outspoken in defense of scientific integrity and in advocating for rigorous science education. In 2009, he wrote an op-ed column on behalf of a group of scientists urging the Texas Board of Education to resist attempts to de-emphasize the teaching of evolution. “Failure to provide our children with a sound, modern education puts them at a serious disadvantage when they compete or engage with the rest of the world,” he wrote.
Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky, president of UT Southwestern Medical Center, called Gilman “a giant in medical research.” Gilman mentored many scientists who went on to become leaders in their fields, Podolsky said.
“His discovery of G proteins and their critical functions is a cornerstone of research across virtually every important domain of medicine,” Podolsky said in a written statement. “As a scientist, teacher and leader, Dr. Gilman’s contributions are legion.”
Gilman was chairman of pharmacology at UT Southwestern for more than 20 years, retiring from the medical center in 2009 as a regental professor emeritus to assume the position of chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, a position he held until 2012.
On Dec. 4, 2014, the UT System Board of Regents approved the creation of the Alfred G. Gilman Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology, which honors his contributions to UT Southwestern and supports the chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and efforts in pharmacology. The inaugural holder of the $1 million endowment is Dr. David Mangelsdorf, chairman of Pharmacology at UT Southwestern, who was Gilman’s successor in the department.
"I was privileged to know him as a great scientist, a great mentor, and above all, as a great human being," Mangelsdorf said.
In 2012, Gilman became the first UT Southwestern Nobel Laureate to donate his medal to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, saying he hoped it might inspire a new generation of scientists.
Gilman was born on July 1, 1941, in New Haven, Conn., the son of the renowned pharmacologist Dr. Alfred Gilman, who was on the faculty at Yale University and who, along with Dr. Louis S. Goodman, authored the preeminent textbook The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. The elder Gilman chose his son’s middle name, Goodman, in honor of his colleague, and his son later counted among his proudest achievements becoming primary editor of multiple editions of the same textbook from 1980 to 1990.
The younger Dr. Gilman received his bachelor of science summa cum laude in biochemistry from Yale University in 1962, followed by his M.D. and doctorate degree in pharmacology in 1969 from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He completed his postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics at the National Institutes of Health in 1971, then went to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he discovered G proteins in 1977.
In 1981, he became Chairman of Pharmacology at UT Southwestern, where he continued to characterize G proteins. His observations provided the first firm molecular basis for understanding certain signal transduction processes present throughout nature.
Along with the Nobel Prize, Gilman’s honors included election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985 and winning the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1989. His immediate survivors include his wife Kathryn; daughters, Amy Ariagno and Anne Sincovec; and son, Edward Gilman.
