Fields of Interest: Cancer, Epidemiology, Melnoma, Mutagenesis, DNA damage/repair

Richard Setlow was born in 1921 and graduated from Yale University in 1947, with a PhD in Physics. He went into the field of Biophysics concentrating in the field of the effects of ionizing radiation and ultraviolet radiation on molecules, nucleic acids, viruses, cells humans and fish. He was a member of the yale Physics and Biophysics Departments until 1960 when he went to the Biology Division of the Oak Ridge National Lab. There, he was the first to show that thymine dimers were a princial cause of UV damage to DNA. That finding led to the discovery of DNA Nucleotide Excision Repair(NER)in 1964. He and colleagues showed in in 1969 that xeroderma pigmentosum cells cannot carry out the first step in NER of UV damage. In 1974 he joined the Brookhaven National Lab.as a Senior Biophysicist. He was Chair of Biology from 1979-87 and Assoc. Director for Life Sciences from 1984-98. He was elected to the Natl. Acad. Sci. USA in 1973 and has received numerous other prestigous Awards. A recent summary of his UV research is in Mutat. Res. 511, 1-14 (2002).