Scienceאברהם הרשקו

Avram Hershko

Avram Hershko is a Hungarian-born Israeli biochemist and physician who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.

born 19372004 Nobel Prize in ChemistryDiscovery of the ubiquitin systemResearch on protein degradation

Born: 31 December 1937, Karcag
Occupation: biochemist, educator, university teacher, physician
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Avram Hershko was born in 1937 in Karcag

Hershko was born Herskó Ferenc in Karcag, Hungary, to a Jewish family. His parents, Shoshana and Moshe Hershko, were teachers. In World War II his father was taken to forced labor and then held by the Soviet Army.

He, his mother and his brother were held in the Szolnok ghetto and then sent to a labor camp in Austria. They survived and returned home, and his father later came back too. In 1950 the family moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem.

He earned an MD in 1965 and a PhD in 1969 at the Hebrew University. He then served in the IDF as a physician and did postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco.

In 1972 he joined the Technion medical faculty in Haifa. Aaron Ciechanover joined his lab in 1976, and with Irwin Rose they described the ubiquitin system that breaks down proteins in cells. The three shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

He lectures to young people about the Holocaust. In 2023 he signed a Nobel laureates' petition against the judicial legislation and spoke at protests in Haifa.