Joachim Frank

Columbia University

Joachim Frank is a German-American biophysicist and Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, widely regarded as the founder of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. He shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson for developing cryo-EM for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution. Frank's central insight was algorithmic: he devised the image-processing methods that take tens of thousands of noisy, randomly oriented two-dimensional projections of individual molecules captured in an electron microscope and computationally classify, align and average them into a sharp three-dimensional reconstruction. These methods, embodied in his widely used SPIDER software suite, transformed the electron microscope from a tool that imaged stained, fixed specimens into one that resolves the architecture of molecular machines such as the ribosome in near-native states and in multiple functional conformations. Developed across decades at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany before his move to Columbia, his single-particle approach is now the dominant method in structural biology and the engine behind the field's resolution revolution. A Benjamin Franklin Medal (2014) and Wiley Prize (2017) laureate, Frank leads a laboratory whose reliance on advanced electron microscopes, detectors, cryo-sample preparation and high-performance computing makes it a prime counterpart for vendors of cryo-EM instrumentation, direct-electron detectors and structural-biology software.