Michael Stuart Brown b. 1941

Millions of Americans use statin drugs to lower their cholesterol and prevent heart attacks and stroke - a treatment made possible by the research of geneticist Michael Stuart Brown. Born in Brooklyn, Brown settled at the University of Texas, where he and colleague Joseph L. Goldstein researched the low-density lipoproteins in cells that extract cholesterol from the bloodstream. In 1985, Brown and Goldstein shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for describing the regulation of cholesterol metabolism - work that led to the development of statins. Brown is a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.