Whitehead Founding Member and former director Gerald R. Fink has been awarded the 2020 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal—bestowed by the Genetics Society of America (GSA). The award recognizes a distinguished scientist who has a lifetime achievement in the field of genetics and a strong history as a mentor to fellow geneticists. The GSA is an international community of more than 5,000 scientists who advance the field of genetics.
Fink, who is also the Herman and Margaret Sokol Professor at Whitehead Institute and a professor of molecular genetics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a former GSA president and the 1982 recipient of the GSA Medal. In honoring him with the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, GSA is recognizing Fink’s discovery of principles central to genome organization and regulation in eukaryotic cells.
This year, the Morgan Medal will also be awarded to David Botstein—chief scientific officer for Calico Labs and professor of molecular biology at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Emeritus, Princeton University—in recognition of his multiple contributions to genetics, including the collaborative development of methods for defining genetic pathways, mapping genomes, and analyzing gene expression.
