Edwin W. Taylor

Edwin W. Taylor is adjunct professor of cell and developmental biology at Northwestern University. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. Taylor received a BA in physics and chemistry from the University of Toronto in 1952; an MSc in physical chemistry from McMaster University in 1955, and a PhD in biophysics from the University of Chicago in 1957. In 2001 Taylor was elected to the National Academy of Scineces in Cellular and Developmental Biology and Biochemistry.

Taylor has made important contributions to a deeper understanding of the way muscles contract and other related cytoskeletal research. His research described the first kinetic model of how molecular motors are able to change chemical energy to mechanical force. He uncovered several molecular cell motors, including some that help certain white blood cells to move. He also elucidated how actin and myosin create movement in non-muscle cells. In 1950, Taylor, together with Gary Borisy who was a graduate student in Taylor's lab, discovered the protein that is the building block of microtubules, although the name of that protein, tubulin, was not coined until 1968. In 1967 Taylor found that the action of colchicine binding to cells could be modeled by a single kind of binding sites, perhaps showing that a unique target might exist. Taylor spends his summers in Woods Hole.Research Center in Massachusetts.