Michael Rosbash

Rosbash was born to a Jewish family who had fled Nazi Germany — his father a cantor — settling in the United States. Working at Brandeis with Jeffrey Hall, he uncovered the molecular clockwork of the circadian rhythm, showing how a gene called 'period' drives its protein to accumulate and then shut its own gene off in a self-correcting 24-hour loop. This explanation of the internal biological clock that governs sleep, metabolism and behavior earned him a share of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.