Joachim Frank

“I am almost celebrated like a rock star. This is very unusual and sometimes a bit embarrassing for me, but I generally enjoy it,” Joachim Frank said in an interview with Technical University of Munich about his role as Nobel-prize recipient. Frank is one of three scientists awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their pioneering work on the development of cryo-electron microscopy, which both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules, which the Nobel Committee described as having “moved biochemistry into a new era.” Frank, a professor of biochemistry at Columbia University, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other scientific affiliations. Besides his academic writing, Frank has also published several short stories and poems pressed by a need to express himself outside of science. “If I were to confine myself to science alone, a great many things in the world would pass me by,” he said. Updated July 2018