Bruce Alberts

2026 Sigma Xi Fellow

Biography

Bruce Alberts, a prominent biochemist with a strong commitment to the improvement of science education, was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama in 2014. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Science (2008-2013) and as one of President Obama’s first three Science Envoys, assigned to Indonesia (2009-2011). Alberts returned to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco in 2005, assuming the Chancellor’s Leadership Chair for Science and Education after serving for 12 years as the president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

During his tenure at the NAS, Alberts was instrumental in developing the landmark National Science Education Standards (1996), emphasizing science as inquiry. He is also noted as one of the original authors of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, a preeminent textbook in the field now in its seventh edition. For the period 2000 to 2009, Alberts served as the co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, an organization in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of 15 national academies of sciences; established to provide scientific advice to the world, it is now known as the InterAcademy Partnership for Policy (relocated to Trieste).

Committed in his international work to the promotion of the “creativity, openness and tolerance that are inherent to science,” Alberts believes that “scientists all around the world must band together to help create more rational, scientifically based societies that find dogmatism intolerable.”