Roger Guillemin

Sometime in 1950 he had a fatal attack of tubercular meningitis. This is when he came across Lucienne Jeanne Billard, a nurse, who took care of him during his illness.

In 1951 he married Lucienne, who later became a professional harpsichord player. The couple are blessed with five daughters Elizabeth, Chantal, Helene, Cecile and Claire and a son François.

He was born on January 11, 1924, in Dijon, the capital town of Burgundy to Raymond Guillemin and Blanche Rigollot Guillemin. His father was a machine toolmaker.

He studied at public schools and the lycée in Dijon. Thereafter he completed BS from the ‘University of Burgundy’ in 1942.

In 1944 he earned MS from the ‘University of Burgundy’.

However his studies got interrupted due to the ongoing ‘Second World War’. He joined French underground while the Nazis occupied France and helped the refugees to getaway to Switzerland.

He obtained his M.D. degree from the ‘University of Lyon’ in 1949.

After completing his Ph.D. in 1953 he joined ‘Baylor College of Medicine’ in Houston, Texas, in its Department of Physiology as Assistant Professor and remained in the post till 1962. Thereafter he became a Professor of Physiology in the College and served the position till 1970, thus serving the ‘Baylor College of Medicine’ for a total of 18 years.

He started research on endocrinology and examined the hypothesis of English anatomist Geoffrey W. Harris that proposed that hypothalamus, which is situated at the base of the brain with the pituitary gland just below it, releases hormones that are circulated in the blood and these hormones control the pituitary gland.

He along with Schally worked at Baylor and applied the mass spectroscopy procedure and a new device called radioimmunoassays (RIAs), developed by physicists Rosalyn Sussman Yalow and Solomon Berson, which aided in isolating and identifying chemical structures of hormones. Thus Guillemin and Schally became two such avant-gardes who isolated, identified and ascertained the chemical nature of hormones.

Meanwhile from 1960 to 1963 Guillemin concurrently worked as Professor of Endocrinology at the ‘Collège de France’ and in 1963 became a naturalized citizen of the US.

He was inducted by the ‘Baylor University’ as Director of the Laboratory for Neuroendocrinology, by which time his scientific cooperation with Schally not only ended but culminated into an intense competition in ascertaining hypothalamic hormones.

In 1977 he jointly received the ‘Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology’ with Andrew V. Schally and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow.