Roberts, Richard J.

Roberts, Richard J. (John) (1943–  ) molecular biologist; born in Derby, England. He took his B.Sc. and Ph.D. at Sheffield University, England. He came to Harvard University in 1969 as a research fellow and in 1972 joined the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. There he led research to identify enzymes and, in 1977, helped to revolutionize molecular biology by discovering that the messages on DNA are not continuous as had been thought. For this 1977 discovery of "split genes" he and Phillip A. Sharp, who made the same discovery independently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in medicine. Beginning in 1992 Taylor directed eukaryotic research at New England Biolabs in Beverly, Mass.