Founder Profile
Walter Gilbert
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Walter Gilbert?
Walter Gilbert is a founder of Biogen Inc., which was founded in 1978 with Kenneth Murray, Phillip Sharp, Charles Weissmann and Heinz Schaller.
- Company founded
- Biogen Inc.
- Founded
- 1978
- Co-founders
- Kenneth Murray, Phillip Sharp, Charles Weissmann and Heinz Schaller
Background
Walter Gilbert is a Harvard biochemist who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a method to determine the sequence of DNA.
Founding Story
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.