Nobel laureate Tsien, who helped track cancer cells, dies

Roger Tsien, a University of California, San Diego professor who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry for helping develop fluorescent markers that could tag cancer cells or track the advance of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain, has died. He was 64.

Tsien died on August 24 in Eugene, Oregon, according to a statement issued by the university on Wednesday.

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said that Tsien apparently died while on a bike trail, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, but the cause of death had not been determined.

“Roger was an extraordinary man: kind, generous, gracious, and always the consummate scientist pushing the limits of his work to expand the possibilities of science,” Khosla said. “He was a rare talent we cannot replace.” 

Tsien was a professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine for 27 years.

In 2008, he shared the Nobel with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie for helping turn green fluorescent protein from a jellyfish into a research tool that could literally illuminate everything from brain cells to bacteria. 

German economist Reinhard Selten, a recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics, has died. He was 85. The University of Bonn, where he had taught since 1984, said in a statement on Thursday that Selten died on August 23 in Poznan, Poland. The university’s rector, Michael Hoch, described Selten as “one of the most significant German scientists with the highest international reputation.”