Honoring Gerald Fink

The Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation has named Whitehead Institute founding member Gerald Fink the recipient of the 2010 Gruber Genetics Prize in honor of his "pioneering work in yeast genetics." Fink says in a Whitehead statement that "this award was quite a surprise, a good surprise," and that "it represents recognition by my peers, which is really the ultimate, because these are the people who understand what I did." The Gruber Foundation touts his yeast transformation work as "leading the list of Fink's groundbreaking contributions," and lauds his discovery of the genetic mechanisms "by which disease-causing fungi form probing filaments and switch from being benign to infectious." According to Whitehead, Fink will receive the Gruber Prize, which comes with $500,000 and a medal, on November 4 at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting, where he will present a lecture.