George Wald (1906-1997)

Awarded the Prize “for the discoveries concerning the primary physiological chemical visual processes in the eye.”

American biochemist. Wald was born on November 18, 1906 in New York. He received his B.Sc. from Washington Square College of New York University in 1927, then took graduate work in zoology at Columbia University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1932. He went to Harvard in 1934 had been there ever since, becoming Professor of Biology in 1948. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1950 to the American Philosophical Society in 1958. Wald died on April 12, 1997 in Cambridge, Mass.