For Immediate Release • October 4, 2005
Terren Roloff, Director
Community Relations
Phone: 354-7338

Nobel prize winning LC grad returns to Washington

Dr. Irwin Rose, a 1943 Lewis and Clark high School graduate who won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, returns to Washington Oct. 14 to receive a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Washington State University.

Rose came to Spokane when he was 13 and spent about seven years in the Lilac City. Now a Southern California resident, Rose said he has fond memories of his time at LC, and remembers an excellent history teacher and a math teacher in particular.

Rose spent several summers working at St. Luke’s where he first became concerned about neurological problems.

“That had a big influence on me,” Rose said in a recent phone interview. “And I really liked the public library downtown. I spent a lot of time there. They had a good collection of science journals and I was heavily influenced by that.”

Rose, who shared the Nobel Prize with two Israeli researchers, won it for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. This work became the basis for the development of drugs that combat cancer, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.