ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 14, 1997 TAG: 9704140101
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
His 1967 Nobel Prize was for his work on the chemical reactions that light sets off in the receptors of the eye.
George Wald, who won the Nobel Prize in 1967 for his work on the biochemistry of vision, died Saturday at age 90 after two years of declining health.
Born in Manhattan's Lower East Side to Jewish immigrants, Wald studied zoology at Washington Square College of New York University and did graduate work at Columbia University.
As a National Research Council fellow in Germany in 1932, he helped discover vitamin A in the retina and discovered retinal, a component of the visual cycle. These discoveries laid the foundation for his later scientific work on how people see.
Hitler's rise to power forced him to leave Germany for the University of Chicago, where he completed his fellowship. He joined the faculty at Harvard University in 1934, teaching biology and doing research for 43 years.
His 1967 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology was for his work on the chemical reactions that light sets off in the receptors of the eye.
Wald also was a peace activist, declaring his opposition to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam in a speech in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ``A Generation in Search of a Future'' was widely reprinted and translated into several languages.
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