Robert Martin Glaeser (born July 20, 1937, in Kenosha, Wisconsin) is an American biochemist. He is a professor emeritus of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in Berkeley, California, US. His main research area is electron diffraction and membrane models.

Glaeser is known ^[1] for his pioneering work in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), where he established how radiation damage was a limiting factor for imaging resolution ^[2] and how freezing hydrated specimens allowed for more tolerance to radiation damage. ^[3] He also pushed electron imaging microscopy resolution and contrast by studying the effect of beam-induced movement on the resolution ^[4] and developed methods for weak-phase imaging. ^[5]

Glaeser studied at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (B.A. 1959) and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1964). He was then a postdoc at the University of Oxford (1963/64) and University of Chicago (1964/65). In 1988/89 he was a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry (MPIB) in Martinsried near Munich, and later a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Awards

• 2021: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lifetime Achievement award ^[6]
• 2018: Glenn T. Seaborg Medal ^[7]
• 2016: member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences ^[8]
• 1983: Guggenheim Fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

References