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Portrait of Paul Berg
Photo: Unknown author, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/CD/B/B/L/L/ · Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Nobel Prize in Chemistry · 1980

Paul Berg

In 1972 he joined DNA from two species into one molecule, starting the genetic engineering behind many modern medicines.

The Nobel citation: “for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA”
Born
June 30, 1926, New York, NY, USA
Died
February 15, 2023, Stanford, CA, USA
Shared with
Walter Gilbert, Frederick Sanger
Affiliation at the time
Stanford University, USA

Chemistry prize

1980

Shared with 2 other laureates.

Age that year

54years

Born in 1926.

Headline credited impact

$75–100billion in economic value

Cumulative global sales of genetically engineered non-antibody protein medicines (a proxy for economic activity). How it was built

Sources cited

24

Fact-checked September 24, 2026.

  • Berg never patented his discoveries and said he gave away everything his lab made. Stanford, he estimated, earned over $100 million from recombinant DNA patents filed by others.
  • In 1974 Berg led a group of scientists who asked colleagues to pause some experiments with the new technique. The voluntary pause was unprecedented and was observed worldwide.
  • Three Nobel laureates, Arthur Kornberg, Jerome Karle and Berg, went to Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, where a stockroom supervisor ran the science clubs.
  • His immigrant parents had little formal schooling and spoke Yiddish at home. Berg spoke mostly Yiddish until he started school.
  • Warned in 1971 that putting his virus-bacteria hybrid into E. coli, a common gut microbe, might spread cancer-linked genes, Berg dropped that step and pushed for safety rules.

The breakthrough

The first recombinant DNA: joining genes from two species in one molecule (1972)

Every living thing carries its instructions in DNA, long chains written in four chemical letters. By the late 1960s scientists could study bacterial genes in detail, but they had no good way to move a chosen gene into an animal cell to see what it did. Berg wanted to use SV40, a small monkey virus that slips its DNA into the cells it infects, as a delivery truck for new genes. First he needed a way to join two unrelated DNA molecules. In 1971 and 1972 he and his colleagues David Jackson and Robert Symons found one, using enzymes that his mentor Arthur Kornberg and others had purified. They cut open the ring-shaped DNA of the virus and a ring of DNA carrying three E. coli genes for using the sugar galactose. To the loose ends of one they added a short tail of A letters, and to the other a tail of T letters. Because A pairs with T, the tails stuck together like the two halves of a zipper, and other enzymes sealed the joins. The result was the first recombinant DNA: a single molecule built from the genes of different species. Peter Lobban and Dale Kaiser, working independently, found a similar method at the same time. Berg's lab later built SV40-based carriers that made a rabbit blood-protein gene work in monkey cells, and a bacterial gene that made up for a missing enzyme in human cells from people with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome.[3],[4],[8],[13]

“There is no doubt that the development and application of recombinant DNA techniques has put us at the threshold of new forms of medicine.”
Paul Berg, From the 'Prospects' section of his Nobel Lecture, Stockholm, 8 December 1980.[3]

What it meant for humanity

Recombinant DNA turned genes into things scientists could cut out, copy, move and change. Within a year, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer made the method far simpler by cutting DNA with a single enzyme and growing the joined DNA inside bacteria, and a flood of new work followed. Berg later said his team took only the first step and that many others quickly found new uses for it. In medicine, the biggest change was that bacteria, yeast and cultured cells could be programmed to make human proteins. Human insulin made in E. coli, sold as Humulin, went on sale in the United States in 1982. Genetically engineered versions of red-blood-cell hormone for anemia, growth hormone, clotting factors for hemophilia, interferons, vaccines against hepatitis B and HPV, and antibody drugs followed. By 2022, regulators in the United States and Europe had licensed 541 such biopharmaceutical products. In 2021, brand-name genetically engineered protein medicines, antibodies included, sold about $271 billion worldwide. Insulin also shows a downside: engineered human insulins, and later analogue insulins, largely replaced animal insulin but cost more. In research, Berg called recombinant DNA the basic tool of biology. He wrote that without it there would be no sequence of the human genome, or of any other genome, and its reach now extends to anthropology, medicine and forensics. Berg also shaped how society handles risky science. The 1975 Asilomar conference, whose organizing committee he chaired, set safety rules that let research continue under oversight, and people facing later controversies, from genetically modified food to embryonic stem cells, have often called for a new Asilomar.

  • Humulin, human insulin made by genetically engineered E. coli, went on sale in the United States in 1982. It was the first insulin made with recombinant DNA.[14],[16]
  • By 2022, US and European regulators had licensed 541 biopharmaceutical products with 435 distinct active ingredients; in 2021, brand-name engineered protein medicines sold about $271 billion.[14]
  • Berg wrote in 2004 that isolating genes from any organism had become routine, and that without recombinant DNA tools there would be no human or other genome sequence.[5]
  • Berg's Stanford lab built SV40-based carriers that moved rabbit, mouse and bacterial genes into mammalian cells and made them work there, tools for studying how animal and human genes function.[3]
  • The Asilomar recommendations he helped write became NIH guidelines in 1976, which were relaxed as experience showed the feared hazards to be minimal.[9],[12]

Impact in numbers

Recombinant DNA is one of the foundations of modern biology and of the biotechnology industry. We record one modeled claim under the shared outcome for recombinant DNA biotechnology: cumulative sales of genetically engineered protein medicines other than antibodies, such as insulins, red-blood-cell hormone, growth hormone, clotting factors, interferons and recombinant vaccines. Antibody drugs are left out because they are counted under the monoclonal-antibody outcome. We label it a ripple effect and credit Berg with 5%, because industry used Cohen and Boyer's simpler cloning method rather than his, and restriction enzymes, DNA sequencing and decades of product development were also essential. We make no people-treated or lives-saved claim. No credible count of patients exists, and some products, such as insulin, replaced older animal-derived versions rather than creating new treatments. The deepest effect is on knowledge: genome sequencing, much of modern genetics and forensic science rest on tools he helped start, and that cannot honestly be priced.

HealthEconomyTechnologyFundamental science

Each number is the laureate’s credited share of a real-world outcome, cumulative to 2025. The whole outcome, the share of credit, and the reasoning are shown so you can check the arithmetic. Outcomes shared with other laureates are counted once on the impact page.

  • Low confidenceRippleModeledEconomy

    Cumulative global sales of genetically engineered non-antibody protein medicines (a proxy for economic activity)

    $75–100

    billion in economic value, credited share

    That is 5% of $1.5–2 trillion in economic value since 1982.

    How this number was built

    Outcome: world sales of recombinant protein medicines other than antibodies and COVID mRNA vaccines (own outcomes), from Humulin in 1982. Anchors: non-antibody sales ~$75B in 2013, since antibodies (~$75B) were about half of biopharma sales (Ecker 2015); originator non-antibody proteins $53.6B and biosimilars $11.1B in 2021 (Walsh 2022). Low: quadratic ramp 1982-2013 ($0.81T) + linear fall to $53.6B over 2014-2021 ($0.50T) + flat 2022-2025 ($0.21T) = ~$1.5T. High: linear ramp 1982-2013 ($1.2T), same later years, plus half of cumulative biosimilar sales (~$0.07T) = ~$2.0T. Nominal dollars; sales measure spending, not net benefit. Share 0.05: Berg made the first recombinant DNA and later mammalian SV40 vectors, but industry cloned with the Cohen-Boyer method; Lobban and Kaiser, restriction enzymes, Kornberg's enzymes, sequencing (Gilbert, Sanger) and product developers share the rest.[3],[8],[14],[15],[16]

    Sources: Nature Biotechnology (via PubMed Central); mAbs (via PubMed Central); J Community Hosp Intern Med Perspect (via PubMed Central); US National Library of Medicine; NobelPrize.org

  • Low confidenceRippleModeledFood

    Extra farm income from genetically engineered crops, which all rely on recombinant DNA

    $4.4–4.9

    billion in economic value, credited share

    That is 1% of $440–490 billion in economic value since 1996.

    How this number was built

    Outcome: extra net farm income from genetically engineered crops, planted commercially since 1996; every one carries genes spliced with recombinant DNA. Brookes (2022, GM Crops & Food) totals $261.3B for 1996-2020 in nominal dollars, $18.8B in 2020 alone. Most gains came after 2008, so to 2024 dollars (BLS CPI) x1.32-1.44 (2015 and 2010 price levels) = $346-376B. 2021-25: 5 yr x $18.8B, low unadjusted ($94B), high x1.21 ($114B). Total about $440-490B. Caveats: the study was funded by Bayer Crop Science, and it counts farm income net of seed costs, not consumer, health or environmental effects. Share 0.01: Berg made the first recombinant DNA (1972), but Cohen-Boyer cloning, Agrobacterium plant transformation (Van Montagu, Chilton, Fraley; 2013 World Food Prize), trait genes and the seed industry did most of the work. Credited: ~$4.4-4.9B.[3],[8],[22],[23],[24]

    Sources: Taylor & Francis (via PubMed Central); The World Food Prize Foundation; US Bureau of Labor Statistics; US National Library of Medicine; NobelPrize.org

The double edge

Berg's work carried risks from the start, and he was among the first to say so. In 1971 the biologist Robert Pollack warned that Berg's planned virus-bacteria hybrids could put cancer-causing virus genes into E. coli, a bacterium that also lives in the human gut, and Berg shelved that experiment. He then led the 1974 call for a pause and chaired the 1975 Asilomar conference. The feared new plagues never appeared; by 2004 Berg could report no documented public-health hazard from recombinant DNA. But Asilomar looked only at safety. Critics faulted it for setting aside biological warfare, human gene therapy and genetically modified foods. Gene therapy, whose risks Berg flagged in his Nobel lecture, had a fatal setback in 1999, when volunteer Jesse Gelsinger died from complications of the gene-delivery vector in a University of Pennsylvania trial. Berg also worried that the money flowing from biotechnology was making universities more commercial and less open. And engineered medicines can be costly. US insulin prices tripled in a decade, and in a 2017 survey at a Yale clinic a quarter of insulin patients reported using less than prescribed, or none, because of cost.

  • Minor

    Fear of engineered germs, and a self-imposed pause

    Colleagues feared that E. coli carrying genes from SV40, a monkey virus that can cause tumors, might escape and harm lab workers or the public. Berg dropped his plan to put the hybrid DNA into bacteria, then led a 1974 call for a voluntary moratorium. The dangers proved far smaller than feared: by 2004 Berg reported no documented public-health hazard from the technology.[3],[5],[8],[9]

  • Moderate

    Ethical questions Asilomar left aside

    The 1975 conference judged only lab and public-health risks. Critics said it ignored biological warfare, gene therapy, germ-line changes to humans and genetically modified crops. Berg answered that those issues were still far off and that narrow focus was why it worked. Gene therapy later proved risky: in 1999 volunteer Jesse Gelsinger died from complications of the gene-delivery vector in a Penn trial.[3],[5],[6],[21]

  • Moderate

    Commercial pressure and high prices

    Berg said the biotechnology boom made universities more commercial and scientists more guarded. Engineered medicines can also be costly, though companies and health systems, not Berg, set prices: US insulin prices tripled over a decade, 25.5% of 199 insulin users surveyed at a Yale clinic in 2017 reported cost-related underuse, and three companies control over 95% of global insulin supply.[6],[19],[20]

Against the odds

Berg grew up in a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn at a time when American Jews faced quiet but real barriers. His parents, from a village near Minsk, married in 1919 and left the next morning, never to see their families again. They spent about three years working their way across Europe and reached New York around 1922, shortly before the 1924 Immigration Act limited arrivals from Eastern Europe. Their first child, born on the journey, died soon after they arrived. His father made fur trimmings for coats and hats. Neither parent had much schooling, but they prized education, which Berg said was true of many immigrant Jewish families. The family could not afford to send him to any college he chose, so he started at tuition-free City College. Berg dreamed of medical research, but he had been led to believe that medicine was a hard field for a Jewish young man to enter, a warning his later mentor Arthur Kornberg had also heard. Most US medical schools then limited the number of Jewish students, a quota that lasted into the postwar years. When he applied to graduate programs in biochemistry, some offers of admission warned him not to think of them as a back door into the medical school, a story he told when discussing antisemitism. Berg himself faced no violence or legal persecution. The barriers he met were informal ones, and by the end of college he had chosen laboratory research in biochemistry over medicine.

  • 1922

    Other

    His parents married near Minsk in 1919, left the next morning, and spent about three years working their way across Europe before reaching New York around 1922, as the US began capping immigration and shortly before the 1924 act further limited arrivals from Eastern Europe. The son they had on the way died soon after they arrived.[11],[18]

  • 1943

    Poverty

    His parents had little schooling and ran a small fur-trimming business. Berg said the family was not well off enough to send him wherever he wanted, so he enrolled at New York's tuition-free City College.[11]

  • 1943

    Discrimination

    Though he had dreamed of medical research since junior high school, Berg recalled having been led to believe that medicine was a hard field for a Jewish young man to enter, one reason he first enrolled in chemical engineering.[11],[17]

  • 1948

    Quota

    Several graduate programs in biochemistry that offered him a place warned that he must not treat it as a way to slip into their medical school. Berg recalled this when discussing antisemitism; quotas limiting Jewish students were then entrenched at most US medical schools.[11],[17]

Jewish background

Both parents JewishCulturally Jewish

Berg was born to Jewish parents, Harry Berg and Sarah Brodsky, who came from a village outside Minsk in the Russian Empire and settled in New York in the early 1920s. They read Yiddish newspapers and spoke Yiddish at home, and Berg spoke mostly Yiddish until he started school, though he later lost the ability to speak it. In his oral history he described his parents' high regard for education as typical of immigrant Jewish families, and he recalled having been led to believe that medicine was a hard field for a Jewish young man to enter. No source we found describes religious observance in his adult life.[7],[10],[11],[12]

Key dates

  1. June 30, 1926

    Born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of three sons of Harry and Sarah Berg, Jewish immigrants from Russia.[1],[7],[10],[11]

  2. 1943

    Finishes high school at 16, starts college, and enlists in the US Navy; he serves on submarine chasers until 1946.[2],[7],[11]

  3. 1948

    Earns a degree in biochemistry from Pennsylvania State University, a year after marrying Mildred Levy.[7],[11]

  4. 1952

    Completes his PhD at Western Reserve University, showing how folic acid and vitamin B12 let animals make the amino acid methionine.[2],[7]

  5. 1959

    Moves with Arthur Kornberg's group from Washington University to Stanford to build a new biochemistry department.[7],[10]

  6. 1967

    Spends a sabbatical year with Renato Dulbecco at the Salk Institute, learning to grow mammalian cells and tumor viruses.[2],[8]

  7. October 1972

    With David Jackson and Robert Symons, publishes a method for joining DNA from different sources: the first recombinant DNA.[3],[13]

  8. July 26, 1974

    A letter he led, published in Science and other journals, asks scientists to pause certain recombinant DNA experiments until the risks are assessed.[9],[12]

  9. February 1975

    Chairs the organizing committee of the Asilomar Conference, which concludes that research can resume under strict safety guidelines.[7],[9],[12]

  10. 1980

    Awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger share the other half. Also receives the Lasker Award.[1],[4],[7]

  11. 1985

    Becomes the first director of Stanford's Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, leading it until 2000.[7],[10]

  12. 2004

    Promotes California's Proposition 71, which created a $3 billion state fund for stem cell research.[10]

  13. February 15, 2023

    Dies at his home on the Stanford campus, aged 96.[1],[10]

Sources

  1. 1.Paul Berg - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
  2. 2.Paul Berg - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (autobiography provided by the laureate, March 2004), 2004
  3. 3.Dissections and Reconstructions of Genes and Chromosomes (Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1980) · NobelPrize.org, 1980
  4. 4.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1980 - Press release · The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / NobelPrize.org, 1980
  5. 5.Asilomar and recombinant DNA (Paul Berg, 26 August 2004) · NobelPrize.org, 2004
  6. 6.Interview with Professor Paul Berg by Joanna Rose, 8 December 2001 (transcript) · NobelPrize.org, 2001
  7. 7.Biographical Overview - The Paul Berg Papers, Profiles in Science · US National Library of Medicine
  8. 8.Protein Synthesis, Tumor Viruses, and Recombinant DNA, 1959-1975 - The Paul Berg Papers, Profiles in Science · US National Library of Medicine
  9. 9.Recombinant DNA Technologies and Researchers' Responsibilities, 1973-1980 - The Paul Berg Papers, Profiles in Science · US National Library of Medicine
  10. 10.Nobel Prize winner and recombinant DNA pioneer Paul Berg dies (Emily Moskal) · Stanford Medicine News Center, 2023
  11. 11.Paul Berg: A Stanford Professor's Career in Biochemistry, Science Politics, and the Biotechnology Industry (oral history conducted by Sally Smith Hughes, 1997) · Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (via Internet Archive), 2000
  12. 12.An Absolute Good? Paul Berg, controversy, and the engineering of life (Ben Seal), Distillations · Science History Institute, 2025
  13. 13.Biochemical method for inserting new genetic information into DNA of Simian Virus 40 (Jackson DA, Symons RH, Berg P), PNAS 69(10):2904-2909 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via PubMed Central), 1972
  14. 14.Biopharmaceutical benchmarks 2022 (Walsh G, Walsh E), Nature Biotechnology 40:1722-1760 · Nature Biotechnology (via PubMed Central), 2022
  15. 15.The therapeutic monoclonal antibody market (Ecker DM, Jones SD, Levine HL), mAbs 7(1):9-14 · mAbs (via PubMed Central), 2015
  16. 16.History of insulin (Quianzon CC, Cheikh I), Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives 2(2) · J Community Hosp Intern Med Perspect (via PubMed Central), 2012
  17. 17.Why Did the United States Medical School Admissions Quota for Jews End? (Halperin EC), Am J Med Sci 358(5):317-325 · American Journal of the Medical Sciences (via PubMed), 2019
  18. 18.The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act), Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations · Office of the Historian, US Department of State
  19. 19.Cost-Related Insulin Underuse Among Patients With Diabetes (Herkert D et al.), JAMA Intern Med 179(1):112-114 · JAMA Internal Medicine (via PubMed Central), 2019
  20. 20.A global perspective on the issue of access to insulin (Beran D, Lazo-Porras M, Mba CM, Mbanya JC), Diabetologia 64:954-962 · Diabetologia (via PubMed Central), 2021
  21. 21.Lessons learned from the gene therapy trial for ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency (Wilson JM), Mol Genet Metab 96(4):151-157 · Molecular Genetics and Metabolism (via PubMed), 2009
  22. 22.Farm income and production impacts from the use of genetically modified (GM) crop technology 1996-2020 (Brookes G), GM Crops & Food 13(1) · Taylor & Francis (via PubMed Central), 2022
  23. 23.Three Biotechnology Scientists Awarded 2013 World Food Prize · The World Food Prize Foundation, 2013
  24. 24.Historical Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U): U.S. city average, all items (December 2024 edition) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025

Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 13 corrections made. How we check

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