Dieter Soll, PhD

A native of Germany, Prof. Dieter Söll earned undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Enzyme Research and served as an assistant professor there 1965-1967. He joined the Yale faculty as an associate professor in MB&B in 1967, was promoted to a full professorship in the department in 1976 and became a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and the Department of Chemistry in 1985 and 1995, respectively. He was chair of MB&B 1982-1984.

Söll's honors include a 1988 Humboldt Preis (Senior Distinguished Scientist Award). He was named a Humboldt Fellow in 2000. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals and has been a member of many federal advisory panels and committees responsible for the examination of issues related to genetic research.

The editor of nine books and author of over 600 scientific articles, Söll spearheaded international efforts in the 1980s to adopt a common computer database and format for recording masses of genetic information gleaned in the worldwide initiative to decipher the entire human genome. He undertook this effort while serving as chair of the International Advisory Committee for DNA Sequence Databases. Earlier in his career, he helped draw national attention to the dangers of genetic engineering research, particularly experiments using hybrid molecules. His and other scientists' concerns ultimately led to federal guidelines for genetic research.