Robert Shapiro

Robert Shapiro is Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Chemistry at New York University. He is author or co-author of over 125 publications, primarily in the area of DNA chemistry, and in the origin of life. In particular, he and his co-workers have studied the ways in which environmental chemicals can damage our hereditary material, causing changes that can lead to mutations and cancer. His research has been supported by numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and other organizations. Further details can be found at the following website:

http://chemistry.fas.nyu.edu/object/robertshapiro.html


Professor Shapiro was born on November 28, 1935 in New York City and obtained a BS in chemistry, summa cum laude (1956) from the City College of New York He received a PhD degree in organic chemistry from Harvard, under the supervision of Nobel Laureate R.B. Woodward (1959), postdoctoral training in DNA chemistry at Cambridge with Nobel Laureate Lord Todd (1959-1960). After an additional year of postdoctoral study at the NYU Medical School, he joined the NYU Chemistry Department in 1961. He has held a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health and has been awarded (with physicist Paul Davies) the Trotter Prize in Complexity, Information and Inference for 2004.

In addition to his research, Professor Shapiro has written four books and several magazine articles for the general public. The books include:

1. “Life Beyond Earth”, co-author with Gerald Feinberg, (Morrow 1980). This book advanced a very positive view about the possibilities for life elsewhere in the Universe. For example, it discussed the possibility of life in underground niches on Mars, in oceans beneath the frozen surfaces of the satellites of Jupiter, and in various environments within Titan, a satellite of Saturn. Today, these sites rank at the top of NASA’s agenda, in searching for life within our Solar System. In addition, it described a number of exotic possibilities for life based on substances other than carbon or water.

Timothy Ferris, commented in a front-page review in the New York Times Book Review: “Informative and authoritative yet venturesome and readable, ‘Life Beyond Earth’ is one of the best books on Earth about life elsewhere.” The New Yorker observed: “For people who like to rerad about solid scientific speculation, this is an exhilarating, informative, and ultimately liberating book.”

2. “Origins, a Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth”, (Simon & Schuster, 1986). This work is described elsewhere in this web site.

3. “The Human Blueprint”, (St. Martin’s Press, 1991). This work described the current and future course of the Human Genome Project. It anticipated the use of DNA testing to resolve the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings paternity question, and the Anastasia controversy, as well as the use of DNA analysis to track the historical movement of human populations. It was an alternate Book-of-the Month Club Selection for Sept. 1991, and in German translation, this book was selected by the jury “Bild am Wissenschaft” as the “Wissenschaftbuch des Jahres” (Science Book of the Year).

4. “Planetary Dreams”, (Wiley, 1999). This work is described elsewhere in this web site.

Professor Shapiro has commented: “obviously, I have developed a taste for very large scientific topics”.
When he is not involved in research, lecturing or writing, he enjoys running, hiking, wine-tastings, raquetball, and travel. He and his wife Sandra, a clinical psychologist practicing in New York, were married in 1964. Their son, Michael, born in 1971, composes music for films (http://mikemusic.com).