Rate My Professor Joseph Goldstein

Joseph L. Goldstein, M.D., serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He also holds the Julie and Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Research, the Paul J. Thomas Chair in Medicine, and the title of Regental Professor of the University of Texas. Goldstein earned a B.S. from Washington and Lee University in 1962 and an M.D. from UT Southwestern Medical Center in 1966. In collaboration with Michael S. Brown, he identified the low-density lipoprotein receptor and elucidated its role in cholesterol homeostasis, establishing the field of receptor-mediated endocytosis and contributing to the development of statin drugs. Their subsequent research identified the SREBP family of transcription factors and the mechanism of regulated intramembrane proteolysis that controls cholesterol and fatty acid synthesis.

Goldstein and Brown received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1985, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1985, and the National Medal of Science in 1988, among other honors including the Albany Medical Center Prize in 2003. Goldstein is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. He chairs the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards Jury and serves on the boards of trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and The Rockefeller University, as well as scientific advisory boards of several institutions. His research interests center on cholesterol and lipoprotein metabolism and the genetics of human disease. Goldstein has trained numerous graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, several of whom have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.