Nobel Prize Winner Rose Receives WSU Award

PULLMAN, Wash – Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Irwin “Ernie” Rose received Washington State University’s highest alumni honor yesterday (Oct. 14) when he was presented a Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award.

The 35th recipient of the award, Rose, 79, accepted the honor during a public ceremony in WSU’s Compton Union Building junior ballroom to a standing-room-only crowd.

He said winning the WSU award was a highlight for him, because it was the only thing he’d ever won by himself.

“I shared the Nobel Prize,” he said. “I shared the history prize at Lewis and Clark in my freshman year. I was only the third most beautiful baby in Brooklyn.”

In 2004, Rose, an enzymologist and emeritus researcher at the University of California, Irvine, and two Israeli researchers received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.” Their discoveries may lead to the development of drugs that combat cancer, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rose moved to Spokane with his family at age 13. After graduating in 1943 from Spokane’s Lewis and Clark High School, he entered Washington State University.

During his studies at WSU, he was influenced by Herb Eastlick, a prominent WSU zoology teacher and mentor to many aspiring health care professionals, and Orlin Biddulph of WSU botany.

So he could prepare for a biochemistry career, Rose transferred from WSU to the University of Chicago, where he graduated and earned a doctoral degree in biochemistry.

His professional career started at Yale University Medical School as a biochemistry faculty member. Later, he joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia as a senior scientist. While there, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995, he retired from Fox Chase.

Rose lives in Laguna Woods, Calif., with his wife, biochemist Zelda Budenstein Rose.