Michael Neuberger


Michael Samuel Neuberger FRS FMedSci was a British biochemist and immunologist.

Education

Born in London, he was educated at Westminster School, and then read Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge as a scholar where he obtained a Master of Arts; he then obtained a PhD at Imperial College, London.

Career

He was a fellow of, and director of studies at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1985 and Professor of molecular immunology there since 2002. He supervised students reading the Natural Sciences Tripos in the fields of cell biology and biochemistry.
He was also joint head of the Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry division at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, alongside Mariann Bienz.
He is most notable for discovering the mechanism of somatic hypermutation.

Awards and honours

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993 and was awarded their GlaxoSmithKline Prize in 2003. He also received the Novartis medal in 2002 and delivered the Novartis medal lecture, entitled "Antibodies: a Paradigm for the Evolution of Molecular Recognition" on 9 April 2002 at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Personal life

He was the son of Albert Neuberger, the brother of David Neuberger, James Neuberger, and Anthony Neuberger, and the brother-in-law of Julia Neuberger. He died of myeloma, a cancer of antibody-producing cells, at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, on 26 October 2013.