Who Founded Biogen?

Murray co-founded Biogen in 1978. In Edinburgh he and his colleagues used genetic engineering to produce hepatitis B virus antigens in bacteria, work that led to one of the first recombinant vaccines and to diagnostic tests. Royalties from the hepatitis B technology helped sustain Biogen through the 1980s, and Murray used his own share to set up the Darwin Trust of Edinburgh, which funds young scientists. He was knighted in 1993 and died in April 2013.

Education: University of Birmingham. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Sharp was one of Biogen's 1978 founders and served on the company's board for many years. His work on how genes are split and spliced underpins much of later RNA-based drug development, a field in which Biogen became a leader through its antisense alliance with Ionis. In 2002 Sharp also co-founded Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, a developer of RNA interference medicines.

Phillip Sharp was born in 1944 in Falmouth. Education: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Union Commonwealth University.

Gilbert helped found Biogen in 1978 and left his Harvard post to serve as its chief executive from 1981 to 1984, an unusual move for a Nobel laureate at the time. As research spending and losses mounted, the board asked him to step aside and he returned to academic work. He later became an early advocate of the Human Genome Project and in 1992 co-founded Myriad Genetics.

Walter Gilbert was born in 1932 in Boston. Education: Trinity College; University of Cambridge.

Weissmann co-founded Biogen in 1978. In 1980 his Zurich laboratory reported cloning human leukocyte (alpha) interferon and producing it in bacteria, Biogen's first major scientific result. The technology was licensed to Schering-Plough and became Intron A, an early source of royalties. Weissmann later became a leading prion researcher, showing that mice lacking the prion protein gene are resistant to scrapie.

Weissmann was born on October 14, 1931 and died on December 11, 2025. A Hungarian-Swiss molecular biologist, he is known for the first cloning and expression of interferon and for work on the molecular genetics of prion diseases. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Schaller co-founded Biogen in 1978 with Gilbert, Sharp, Murray and Weissmann. At Heidelberg he turned to hepatitis B virus research in the late 1970s, sequenced the viral genome with Gilbert and Murray and contributed to the recombinant DNA work behind a widely used hepatitis B vaccine. He co-founded Heidelberg's Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH) in 1982, received the Robert Koch Medal in 2004, and with his wife Chica Schaller set up a foundation that funds young biomedical researchers. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).