Irving Lerner "Irv" Weissman M.D. (born Great Falls, Montana

Great Falls, Montana

Great Falls is a city in and the county seat of Cascade County, Montana, United States. The population was 58,505 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Great Falls, Montana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Cascade County...

, October 21, 1939) is a Professor of Pathology and Developmental Biology at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 where he is the Director of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

Weissman was raised in Great Falls, Montana and started his scientific career at the McLaughlin Research Institute there. He obtained his MD from Stanford University in 1965 after earning a BS from Montana State University

Montana State University - Bozeman

Montana State University – Bozeman is a public university located in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's land-grant university and primary campus in the Montana State University System, which is part of the Montana University System...

 in 1961. His research has since focused on hematopoietic stem cell biology.

Awards

His awards include election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989, and being named California Scientist of the Year in 2002.

• 2008 Robert Koch Prize
  Robert Koch Prize
  The Robert Koch Medal and Award are two prizes awarded annually for excellence in the biomedical sciences. These awards grew out of early attempts by Robert Koch to generate funding to support his research into the cause and cure for tuberculosis...
  
  

Research focus

He developed methods to identify stem cells, and has extensively researched stem cells and progenitor cells. His research focus is "the phylogeny and developmental biology of the cells that make up the blood-forming and immune system." Weissman is widely recognized as the "father of hematopoiesis", in which he is the first to purify blood forming stem cells in both mouse and humans. His work has contributed greatly to the understanding of how a single hematopoietic stem cell can give rise to different specialized blood cells. Weissman is also a leading expert in the field of cancer stem cell, where many of his work have shed light onto the understanding of the pathogenesis of multiple human malignancies. He is known also for transgenic research in which human brain cells were grown in mouse brains.