Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service / CC BY 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Andrew Fire genuinely awes me. Raised in Palo Alto and trained at Berkeley, he shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering RNA interference, work that revealed how organisms can switch genes off and reshaped modern medicine and drug development from the ground up. The Gairdner and Paul Ehrlich prizes only underline the scale of it. What I find most appealing, though, is how little noise surrounds him. No scandal, no spectacle, just the patient accumulation of careful experiments. To me he embodies the rarest kind of fame, earned by quietly and profoundly changing the world.
Overview
Andrew Zachary Fire (born April 27, 1959) is an American biologist and professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). This research was conducted at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and published in 1998.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Andrew Fire
- Name (Japanese)
- アンドリュー・ファイアー
- Reading
- あんどりゅー・ふぁいあー
- Born
- April 27, 1959 (age 67)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Taurus / Boar
- Origin
- Palo Alto, California, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- biologist / geneticist / physician / physicist / pathologist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Fremont High School
- University
- University of California, Berkeley
Awards & achievements
- 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 2005 Canada Gairdner International Award
- 2006 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize
- 2004 Dr H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics
- 2005 Massry Prize
- 2004 Rosenstiel Award
- 2002 Meyenburg Prize
- 2002 Genetics Society of America Medal
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.