Stuart J. Edelstein BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Professor Stuart J. Edelstein has had a long-standing interest in genetic diseases. He began investigating human hemoglobin during his doctoral studies at the University of California in Berkeley and pursued his interests in proteins as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur in the laboratory of Jacques Monod. He then joined the faculty of Cornell University, where he taught from 1969-1986. During this period he and his students studied the mutant form of hemoglobin responsible for sickle cell disease and in 1978 established its 14-stranded helical structure. This period also included two sabbatical years as Professeur associé at the University of Paris XII (Créteil) in the laboratory of Prof. Jean Rosa. In 1986, Stuart J. Edelstein moved to the University of Geneva as Professor of Biochemistry. He returned to the Institut Pasteur in 1994 for a sabbatical leave in the laboratory of Prof. Jean-Pierre Changeux, with whom he continues an active collaboration on nicotinic receptors. Together they have developed functional models to explain the properties of receptors responsible for genetic diseases, including congenital myasthenic syndromes. Other details of his research activities can be found on his web page. Prof. Edelstein has served as President of the Swiss Biophysical Society. He has published over 100 research articles and several books, including THE SICKLED CELL. FROM MYTHS TO MOLECULES (Harvard University Press, 1986). He is a membre étranger of the French Académie des Sciences and coeditor in chief of the Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences - Science de la Vie. His rare moments away from research and editing are occupied by long walks in the alps or in the streets of Paris. BACK TO: INTRODUCTION