On Oct. 5, 2009, Carol W. Greider won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 for discovering how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.

In 1987, She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her supervisor at Berkeley was Elizabeth Blackburn who she shared the Nobel Proze with when they discovered telomerase which produces the telomeres’ DNA.