Gerald Joyce

Who is Gerald Joyce?

Gerald Francis Joyce is a professor and researcher at The Scripps Research Institute, best known for his work on in vitro evolution of catalytic RNA molecules and the origins of life.

Joyce received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1978, completed his M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego in 1984. He was a postdoctoral fellow and senior research associate at the Salk Institute from 1985 to 1989, and joined Scripps in 1989. Joyce was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2001. He served as Dean of the Faculty at Scripps from 2006 to 2011, during which time he was instrumental in founding a second campus in Jupiter, Florida.

Joyce received the Urey medal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life in 2005. In 2009, Joyce's lab was the first to produce a self-replicating in vitro system, capable of exponential growth and continuing evolution, composed entirely of RNA enzymes.