Renowned Del Mar researcher passes

George E. Palade, 95

Dr. George Palade, the UC San Diego Nobel laureate whose work isolating, imaging and identifying the function of minute organelles within cells prompted the Nobel committee to label him and his co-winners the fathers of cell biology, has died. He was 95.

Palade died Tuesday at his home in Del Mar after a long illness.

Palade shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two other scientists for a whole series of experiments.

Palade was recruited to UC San Diego from Yale University in 1990 to serve as UCSD School of Medicine’s first Dean for Scientific Affairs. He created the department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, which has risen to become one of the preeminent cell biology programs in the nation.

Palade was born on Nov. 19, 1912, in Jassy, the old capital of Moldavia, the eastern province of Romania. He immigrated to the United States in 1946.

His is survived by a wife, four children and two grandchildren.

Memorial services are pending.