Hamilton O. Smith

Smith in 2012

Born| (1931-08-23)August 23, 1931

New York City, U.S

Died| October 25, 2025(2025-10-25) (aged 94)

Ellicott City, Maryland, U.S.

Education| University of California, Berkeley, BA
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, MD
Known for| Restriction enzymes
Awards| Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978
Scientific career
Fields| Molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics
Institutions| Washington University School of Medicine

Hamilton Othanel Smith (August 31, 1931 – October 25, 2025) was an American microbiologist and Nobel laureate.[1][2]

## Contents

* 1 Early life and education
* 2 Scientific career
* 3 Personal life and death
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
* 6 External links

## Early life and education

Hamilton Othanel Smith was born in New York City on August 31, 1931[3][4] and grew up in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.[5]

Smith graduated from University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but in 1950 transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his B.A. in Mathematics in 1952. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1956.[5] Between 1956 and 1957 Smith worked for the Washington University in St. Louis Medical Service.

During the next few years he undertook US Navy military service as well as a medical residency at Henry Ford Hospital.[5] Hamilton then went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on a US National Institutes of Health fellowship where he worked with infectious disease expert Myron M. Levine.[5]

In 1975, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship he spent at the University of Zurich.

## Scientific career

In 1970, Smith and Kent W. Wilcox discovered the first type II restriction enzyme,[6] which is now known as HindII.[1] Smith went on to discover DNA methylases that constitute the other half of the bacterial host restriction and modification systems, as hypothesized by Werner Arber of Switzerland.[1]

Smith was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978 for discovering type II restriction enzymes with Werner Arber and Daniel Nathans as co-recipients.

He later became a leading figure in the nascent field of genomics, when in 1995 he and a team at The Institute for Genomic Research sequenced the first bacterial genome, that of Haemophilus influenzae.[7] H. influenza was the same organism in which Smith had discovered restriction enzymes in the late 1960s. He subsequently played a key role in the sequencing of many of the early genomes at The Institute for Genomic Research, and in the assembly of the human genome at Celera Genomics, which he joined when it was founded in 1998.

Smith later directed a team at the J. Craig Venter Institute that worked towards creating a partially synthetic bacterium, Mycoplasma laboratorium. In 2003 the same group synthetically assembled the genome of a virus, Phi X 174 bacteriophage. Smith was scientific director of privately held Synthetic Genomics, which was founded in 2005 by Craig Venter to continue this work. Synthetic Genomics is working to produce biofuels on an industrial-scale using recombinant algae and other microorganisms.[8]

## Personal life and death

Smith was married to Liz Smith until her death and they had five children.[4] They also had 12 grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren. One son preceded him in death.[4]

Smith was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2016.[9] He died at his home in Ellicott City, Maryland, on October 25, 2025, at the age of 94.[4][10]

## References

This article incorporates CC-BY-2.5 text from the reference[1]

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Gitschier, J. (2012). "A Half-Century of Inspiration: An Interview with Hamilton Smith". PLOS Genetics 8 (1). doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002466. PMID 22253610.
2. ↑ Multiple sources:
* Raju, T. N. (1999). "The Nobel Chronicles". The Lancet 354 (9189): 1567. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)76606-X. PMID 10551539.
* Shampo, M. A.; Kyle, R. A. (1995). "Hamilton Smith--Nobel Prize winner in medicine or physiology". Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Elsevier) 70 (6): 540. doi:10.1016/s0025-6196(11)64310-3. PMID 7776712.
* Berg, K. (1978). "The Nobel prize in physiology and medicine 1978. Nobel prize to a controversial research field". Tidsskrift for den Norske Laegeforening 98 (34–36): 1741–1742. PMID 725894.
* "Molecular genetics takes Nobel Prize". JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association (American Medical Association) 240 (20): 2137–2138. 1978. doi:10.1001/jama.240.20.2137. PMID 359842.
* "Brazil learns its ecological lessons–the hard way". Nature 275 (5682): 689–90. 1978. doi:10.1038/275684a0. PMID 360075. Bibcode: 1978Natur.275..684..
3. ↑ "Hamilton O. Smith Facts". https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1978/smith/facts/.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Remembering Hamilton O. Smith". October 2025. https://www.jcvi.org/media-center/remembering-hamilton-o-smith.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Venter, J. Craig (2025-11-10). "Hamilton Smith obituary: molecular biologist who co-discovered precise molecular scissors for cutting DNA". Nature 647 (8089): 311–311. doi:10.1038/D41586-025-03635-Y. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q136779436.
6. ↑ Smith H, Wilcox KW (1970). "A Restriction enzyme from Hemophilus influenzae *1I. Purification and general properties". Journal of Molecular Biology 51 (2): 379–391. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(70)90149-X. PMID 5312500.
7. ↑ Smith, H. O.; Wilcox, K. W. (1992). "A restriction enzyme from Hemophilus influenzae. I. Purification and general properties. 1970". Biotechnology (Reading, Mass.) 24: 38–50. PMID 1330118.
8. ↑ "Craig Venter Has Algae Biofuel in Synthetic Genomics' Pipeline - Xconomy". Xconomy. 4 June 2009. http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2009/06/04/craig-venter-has-algae-biofuel-in-synthetic-genomics-pipeline/.
9. ↑ "After saving countless lives, Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith retires as his own health falters". San Diego Tribune. December 19, 2020. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2020/12/19/after-saving-countless-lives-nobel-laureate-hamilton-smith-retires-as-his-own-health-falters/. Retrieved October 29, 2025.
10. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/science/hamilton-smith-dead.html

## Further reading

* Lagerkvist, U (October 1978). "To split a gene" (in sv). Läkartidningen 75 (43): 3892–4. PMID 279742.

## External links

* Miss nobel-id as parameter

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Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

1901–1925|

* 1901: Emil Behring
* 1902: Ronald Ross
* 1903: Niels Finsen
* 1904: Ivan Pavlov
* 1905: Robert Koch
* 1906: Camillo Golgi / Santiago Ramón y Cajal
* 1907: Alphonse Laveran
* 1908: Élie Metchnikoff / Paul Ehrlich
* 1909: Emil Kocher
* 1910: Albrecht Kossel
* 1911: Allvar Gullstrand
* 1912: Alexis Carrel
* 1913: Charles Richet
* 1914: Róbert Bárány
* 1915
* 1916
* 1917
* 1918
* 1919: Jules Bordet
* 1920: August Krogh
* 1921
* 1922: Archibald Hill / Otto Meyerhof
* 1923: Frederick Banting / John Macleod
* 1924: Willem Einthoven
* 1925

1926–1950|

* 1926: Johannes Fibiger
* 1927: Julius Wagner-Jauregg
* 1928: Charles Nicolle
* 1929: Christiaan Eijkman / Frederick Gowland Hopkins
* 1930: Karl Landsteiner
* 1931: Otto Warburg
* 1932: Charles Scott Sherrington / Edgar Adrian
* 1933: Thomas Morgan
* 1934: George Whipple / George Minot / William Murphy
* 1935: Hans Spemann
* 1936: Henry Dale / Otto Loewi
* 1937: Albert Szent-Györgyi
* 1938: Corneille Heymans
* 1939: Gerhard Domagk
* 1940
* 1941
* 1942
* 1943: Henrik Dam / Edward Doisy
* 1944: Joseph Erlanger / Herbert Gasser
* 1945: Alexander Fleming / Ernst Chain / Howard Florey
* 1946: Hermann Muller
* 1947: Carl Cori / Gerty Cori / Bernardo Houssay
* 1948: Paul Müller
* 1949: Walter Hess / António Egas Moniz
* 1950: Edward Kendall / Tadeusz Reichstein / Philip Hench

1951–1975|

* 1951: Max Theiler
* 1952: Selman Waksman
* 1953: Hans Krebs / Fritz Lipmann
* 1954: John Enders / Thomas Weller / Frederick Robbins
* 1955: Hugo Theorell
* 1956: André Cournand / Werner Forssmann / Dickinson W. Richards
* 1957: Daniel Bovet
* 1958: George Beadle / Edward Tatum / Joshua Lederberg
* 1959: Severo Ochoa / Arthur Kornberg
* 1960: Frank Burnet / Peter Medawar
* 1961: Georg von Békésy
* 1962: Francis Crick / James Watson / Maurice Wilkins
* 1963: John Eccles / Alan Hodgkin / Andrew Huxley
* 1964: Konrad Bloch / Feodor Lynen
* 1965: François Jacob / André Lwoff / Jacques Monod
* 1966: Francis Rous / Charles B. Huggins
* 1967: Ragnar Granit / Haldan Hartline / George Wald
* 1968: Robert W. Holley / Har Khorana / Marshall Nirenberg
* 1969: Max Delbrück / Alfred Hershey / Salvador Luria
* 1970: Bernard Katz / Ulf von Euler / Julius Axelrod
* 1971: Earl Sutherland Jr.
* 1972: Gerald Edelman / Rodney Porter
* 1973: Karl von Frisch / Konrad Lorenz / Nikolaas Tinbergen
* 1974: Albert Claude / Christian de Duve / George Palade
* 1975: David Baltimore / Renato Dulbecco / Howard Temin

1976–2000|

* 1976: Baruch Blumberg / Daniel Gajdusek
* 1977: Roger Guillemin / Andrew Schally / Rosalyn Yalow
* 1978: Werner Arber / Daniel Nathans / Hamilton O. Smith
* 1979: Allan Cormack / Godfrey Hounsfield
* 1980: Baruj Benacerraf / Jean Dausset / George Snell
* 1981: Roger Sperry / David H. Hubel / Torsten Wiesel
* 1982: Sune Bergström / Bengt I. Samuelsson / John Vane
* 1983: Barbara McClintock
* 1984: Niels Jerne / Georges Köhler / César Milstein
* 1985: Michael Brown / Joseph L. Goldstein
* 1986: Stanley Cohen / Rita Levi-Montalcini
* 1987: Susumu Tonegawa
* 1988: James W. Black / Gertrude B. Elion / George H. Hitchings
* 1989: J. Michael Bishop / Harold E. Varmus
* 1990: Joseph Murray / E. Donnall Thomas
* 1991: Erwin Neher / Bert Sakmann
* 1992: Edmond Fischer / Edwin G. Krebs
* 1993: Richard J. Roberts / Phillip Sharp
* 1994: Alfred G. Gilman / Martin Rodbell
* 1995: Edward B. Lewis / Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard / Eric F. Wieschaus
* 1996: Peter C. Doherty / Rolf M. Zinkernagel
* 1997: Stanley B. Prusiner
* 1998: Robert F. Furchgott / Louis Ignarro / Ferid Murad
* 1999: Günter Blobel
* 2000: Arvid Carlsson / Paul Greengard / Eric Kandel

2001–present|

* 2001: Leland H. Hartwell / Tim Hunt / Paul Nurse
* 2002: Sydney Brenner / H. Robert Horvitz / John E. Sulston
* 2003: Paul Lauterbur / Peter Mansfield
* 2004: Richard Axel / Linda B. Buck
* 2005: Barry Marshall / Robin Warren
* 2006: Andrew Fire / Craig Mello
* 2007: Mario Capecchi / Martin Evans / Oliver Smithies
* 2008: Harald zur Hausen / Luc Montagnier / Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
* 2009: Elizabeth Blackburn / Carol W. Greider / Jack W. Szostak
* 2010: Robert G. Edwards
* 2011: Bruce Beutler / Jules A. Hoffmann / Ralph M. Steinman (posthumously)
* 2012: John Gurdon / Shinya Yamanaka
* 2013: James Rothman / Randy Schekman / Thomas C. Südhof
* 2014: John O'Keefe / May-Britt Moser / Edvard Moser
* 2015: William C. Campbell / Satoshi Ōmura / Tu Youyou
* 2016: Yoshinori Ohsumi
* 2017: Jeffrey C. Hall / Michael Rosbash / Michael W. Young
* 2018: James P. Allison / Tasuku Honjo
* 2019: Gregg L. Semenza / Peter J. Ratcliffe / William Kaelin Jr.

Template:1978 Nobel Prize winners

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Laureates of the Prince or Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

1980s|

* 1981: Alberto Sols
* 1982: Manuel Ballester
* 1983: Luis Antonio Santaló Sors
* 1984: Antonio Garcia-Bellido
* 1985: David Vázquez Martínez and Emilio Rosenblueth
* 1986: Antonio González González
* 1987: Jacinto Convit and Pablo Rudomín
* 1988: Manuel Cardona and Marcos Moshinsky
* 1989: Guido Münch

1990s|

* 1990: Santiago Grisolía and Salvador Moncada
* 1991: Francisco Bolívar Zapata
* 1992: Federico García Moliner
* 1993: Amable Liñán
* 1994: Manuel Patarroyo
* 1995: Manuel Losada Villasante and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad of Costa Rica
* 1996: Valentin Fuster
* 1997: Atapuerca research team
* 1998: Emilio Méndez Pérez and Pedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar
* 1999: Ricardo Miledi and Enrique Moreno González

2000s|

* 2000: Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier
* 2001: Craig Venter, John Sulston, Francis Collins, Hamilton Smith and Jean Weissenbach
* 2002: Lawrence Roberts, Robert E. Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee
* 2003: Jane Goodall
* 2004: Judah Folkman, Tony Hunter, Joan Massagué, Bert Vogelstein and Robert Weinberg
* 2005: Antonio Damasio
* 2006: Juan Ignacio Cirac
* 2007: Peter Lawrence and Ginés Morata
* 2008: Sumio Iijima, Shuji Nakamura, Robert Langer, George M. Whitesides and Tobin Marks
* 2009: Martin Cooper and Raymond Tomlinson

2010s|

* 2010: David Julius, Baruch Minke and Linda Watkins
* 2011: Joseph Altman, Arturo Álvarez-Buylla and Giacomo Rizzolatti
* 2012: Gregory Winter and Richard A. Lerner
* 2013: Peter Higgs, François Englert and European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN
* 2014: Avelino Corma Canós, Mark E. Davis and Galen D. Stucky

Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

2010s|

* 2015: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna
* 2016: Hugh Herr
* 2017: Rainer Weiss, Kip S. Thorne, Barry C. Barish and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration
* 2018: Svante Pääbo
* 2019: Joanne Chory and Sandra Myrna Díaz

2020s|

* 2020: Yves Meyer, Ingrid Daubechies, Terence Tao and Emmanuel Candès

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