Don Craig Wiley

Wiley received his doctoral degree in biophysics in 1971 from Harvard University, where he worked under the direction of the subsequent 1976 chemistry Nobel Prize winner William N. Lipscomb, Jr.

There, Wiley did early work on the structure of aspartate carbamoyltransferase, the largest molecular structure determined at that time. Noteworthy in this effort was that Wiley managed to grow crystals of aspartate carbamoyltransferase suitable for obtaining its X-ray structure, a particularly difficult task in the case of this molecular complex.

Wiley was world-renowned for finding new ways to help the human immune system battle such viral scourges as smallpox, influenza, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and herpes simplex.

Famous quote: "I'm sorry, but I just don't understand anything in biology unless I know what it looks like."

In 1990, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. His research was honored with the 1993 Cancer Research Institute William B. Coley Award. Harvard called Wiley "one of the most influential biologists of his generation." In 1999, Wiley and another Harvard professor, Jack L. Strominger, won the Japan Prize for their discoveries of how the immune system protects humans from infections.

Wiley owned a British racing green-colored Aston Martin.

Don Wiley disappeared on November 15, 2001; his body was found in the Mississippi River a month later and his death was ruled to be an accident.