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Gilman, 1994 Nobel Prize-winning scientist in Texas, dies

Former dean of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and a 1994 Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr Alfred Gilman has passed away due to illness. He was 74.

The scientist had been fighting pancreatic cancer for the last two years.

He is survived by his wife Kathryn, daughters Amy Ariagno and Anne Sincovec and a son Edward Gilman.

American pharmacologist and biochemist Gilman shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr Martin Rodbell of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for their discovery of G proteins.

Such proteins help in the process of receiving signals from outside the cell and activating responses.

Gilman was born July 1, 1941, in New Haven, Connecticut.

He discovered G proteins while at the University of Virginia in 1977. 

He became chairman of pharmacology at UT Southwestern in 1981.

He was a former executive vice president for Academic Affairs and provost at UT Southwestern and he was also chairman of pharmacology at UT Southwestern for more than 20 years.