College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences

October 3, 2017 Faculty, In the News, School of Biology and Ecology

Jeffrey C. Hall, who was a member of the University of Maine community from 2004 to 2012 as an adjunct professor and a Libra Professor of Neurogenetics, spoke with the Bangor Daily News, Maine Public, WABI(Channel 5) and WLBZ (Channel 2) about being one of three scientists to win the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young won the $1.1 million prize for their work on finding genetic mechanisms behind circadian rhythms. Scientists have known about the circadian rhythms that regulate the daily life of living creatures for centuries, but until the scientists conducted their research, no one understood how those rhythms worked, Maine Public reported. From his home in Cambridge, Maine, Hall told the BDN that throughout much of their research, he and his colleagues were ridiculed for their work. Some biologists believed that it was a waste of time trying to answer these questions of biology through genetic research, he said. “We now recognize that biological clocks function by the same principles in cells of other multicellular organisms, including humans,” the Nobel Assembly said in its award summary. Portland Press Herald also reported on Hall’s winning research and cited his longtime friend and one-time colleague, Harold “Dusty” Dowse, a former UMaine biologist.