Dr. Richard O. Hynes has added another laurel to his impressive list of achievements.
Dr. Hynes, professor of biology, director of the Center for Cancer Research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, is one of 55 new members elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, raising the total active membership to 519. The 55 new members are joined by five new senior members and four new foreign associates. There are 21 members from MIT.
New members are elected by current active members on the basis of professional achievement and of demonstrated interest, concern and involvement with problems and critical issues that affect the health of the public.
Established in 1970 as a unit of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute is broadly based in the biomedical sciences and health professions, as well as related aspects of the behavioral and social sciences, administration, law, the physical sciences and engineering.
Professor Hynes is a distinguished cell biologist whose research focuses on the molecular basis of cell adhesion and its role in normal development, physiology and pathology. He has directed the Center for Cancer Research since 1991, when he exchanged posts with Professor Phillip A. Sharp after heading the Department of Biology since 1989. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since coming here as an assistant professor in 1975. Before that he was a research fellow at the Imperial Cancer Fund Laboratories in London.
Professor Hynes was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and is a citizen of the United Kingdom and of the United States. He holds both the BA (1966) and MA degrees (1970) from Cambridge University and the PhD (1971) from MIT.
His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, which enabled him to spend a year in London working on the development of the brain, and election to the Royal Society of London in 1989. He was a Harvey Lecturer in 1986 is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 25, 1995.
