Gilman, Alfred Goodman
Alfred Goodman Gilman, 1941–, American biochemist, b. New Haven, Conn., M.D., Ph.D. Case Western Reserve Univ., 1969. He taught at the Univ. of Virginia (1971–1981) before becoming a professor at the Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical School; he has been the dean of the medical school since 2004. Following Martin Rodbell's discovery that a transducer of some kind facilitates communication within the cell, Gilman uncovered the chemical nature of the transducer. Now known as G-proteins because they bind guanosine triphosphate (GTP), these transducers activate various cellular amplifier systems. The findings of Gilman and Rodbell have been medically significant, as many symptoms of disease can be attributed to altered G-protein function, and Rodbell and Gilman shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their work. Gilman also was the primary editor of three editions (1980, 1985, 1990) of Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, a standard pharmacology textbook.