spent a year conducting bacterial genetics research at Harvard Medical School and published his work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in 1965. Career Anderson then spent two years, 1965–1967, under the tutelage of Marshall Nirenberg in a laboratory at the National Institutes of Health, where he helped finish the decipherment of the genetic code. Nirenberg rewarded his efforts by allowing him to make the first public presentation of the final genetic code before an audience of approximately 2,000 scientists at the April 1966 meeting of FASEB in Atlantic City. After his successful post-doctoral fellowship with Nirenberg, Anderson was given his own laboratory in the NIH in July 1967. He made clear from the beginning that his goal was to develop a way to give a normal gene to children with a genetic defect in order to cure the genetic disease. He, therefore, decided to begin by studying human disease on the molecular level. Over his career, he has published more than 400 research papers, 39 editorials, and 5 books, and has received numerous awards and honors including 5 honorary doctorate degrees. Discovery of eukaryotic protein synthesis initiation factors As Anderson began his own career, protein synthesis in bacteria was at the forefront of molecular biology research. He set out to discover protein synthesis initiation factors in mammals. His first major accomplishment, in 1970, was the isolation from rabbit reticulocytes (immature red blood cells) of several factors that initiated hemoglobin synthesis on reticulocyte ribosomes. It was later learned that these factors also initiated protein synthesis in essentially all eukaryotic systems. Development of a cell-free protein synthesizing system In order to isolate the predicted molecule "messenger RNA", a cell-free protein synthesizing system of mRNA-free ribosomes was needed. Initially, a cell-free tRNA-dependent protein synthesizing system was developed from rabbit reticulocytes ribosomes, using the endogenous mRNA on the ribosomes. An analogous system was developed with human reticulocyte ribosomes. Isolation of human messenger RNA A procedure was developed for stripping the putative mRNA from the ribosomes. This ribosomal wash from rabbit reticulocyte ribosomes was incubated in a cell-free system and rabbit hemoglobin was produced. The procedure for stripping endogenous mRNA from rabbit reticulocyte ribosomes was used on human reticulocyte ribosomes to obtain human globin mRNA. Synthesis of normal and mutant globin proteins using human globin mRNA Stripped rabbit reticulocyte ribosomes were programmed with mRNA isolated from thalassemia, sickle cell anemia,