Add one more name to the list of Nobel Prize-winning Eagle Scouts

Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and Eagle Scout, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of microRNA, the molecules that help control our genes.

Ruvkun (Eagle Class of 1966) earned the recognition jointly with his co-researcher, Victor Ambros.

I’m not going to pretend to understand exactly what microRNA is, but Professor Olle Kämpe, Nobel Committee vice chair, described it as “a tiny molecule that has opened a new field in gene regulation.”

“MicroRNAs are important for our understanding of embryological development, normal cell physiology and diseases such as cancer,” Kämpe says. “As an example, tumors often perturb microRNA networks to grow.”

Ruvkun earned the rank of Eagle Scout from Troop 1 in Piedmont, California. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1973 with a degree in biophysics, then went on to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1982.

As best as we can tell, Ruvkun is the seventh Eagle Scout to earn a Nobel Prize. Are we missing any? Let us know!

Peter Agre

Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2003 for the discover of aquaporin water channels, proteins that move water molecules through cell membranes.

Agre (Eagle Class of 1964) received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 2005.

Thomas Cech

Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1989 for the discovery of catalytic properties of RNA.

Cech (Eagle Class of 1962) says his time in Scouting helped nurture his interest in science.

Dudley Herschbach

Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1986 for his contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.

Herschbach (Eagle Class of 1946) received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 2004.

William Moerner

Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2014 for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.

Moerner (Eagle Class of 1967) was a member of Troop 235 in San Antonio, Texas, and his dad was the Scoutmaster. We wrote about Moerner back in 2014.

Frederick Reines

Nobel Prize in physics in 1995 for the detection of the neutrino.

Reines (Eagle Class of 1934) once wrote: “My scientific interests blossomed during this time in the Boy Scouts, where I began to build crystal radios from scratch.”

Robert Richardson

Nobel Prize in physics in 1996 for the discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.

Richardson (Eagle Class of 1951) spent several summers working as a counselor at Scout camp and once wrote: “With my parents’ encouragement, I became very active in the Boy Scouts. …  I especially enjoyed the outdoor activities of Scouting — hiking, camping and even bird-watching.”

Honorable mention

There is no Nobel Prize awarded in the biosciences. But in 1980, the Royal Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize, established the Crafoord Prize to cover areas not covered by Nobel Prizes, such as biology, oceanography, mathematics and astronomy.

E.O. Wilson, a Distinguished Eagle Scout and visionary scientist who earned the nickname “The Ant Man” for his work in entomology, received the Crafoord Prize in 1990 for his theory of island biogeography, in which he explained, among other discoveries, why some smaller islands have more species of birds than larger islands.

Photo by Getty Images