Nobel Prize-winner Sidney Altman was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on May 7, 1939 to a grocery store keeper in Notre-Dame-de Grace neighborhood. After attending a local high school, Altman departed at 17 for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1960.

After a stint as a teaching assistant at Columbia University in New York City, Altman earned a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, before returning east for a job tutoring at Radcliffe College. Simultaneously, he landed a molecular biology research fellowship at Harvard University, and, subsequently, another fellowship at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where he conducted experiments from 1969 to 1971. In 1971, Altman joined the faculty of Yale University. After becoming a professor of biology at Yale in 1980, teaching biochemistry and genetics, he chaired the department for two years during the mid-1980s and also held the dean's chair of Yale College from 1985 to 1990. In 1984 Altman earned United States citizenship, but he retained dual citizenship in Canada and the U. S. A.

Altman began his important work on cellular biology in the late 1970s. His work with ribonucleic acid (RNA) lea to the discovery that, contrary to the prevailing belief at the time, RNA could act as a catalyst in cellular reactions. Previously, it had been believed that only proteins could facilitate reactions in living systems. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) are the two compounds that carry the blueprints for life. Altman shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with American scientist Thomas Robert Cech, who arrived at similar conclusions while conducting independent research.
Work History
"Professor of chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 1994-; Sterling professor of biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1990-; Dean, Yale College, 1985-90; Chairman of chemistry department, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 1983-85; professor of biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1980-; From assistant to associate professor, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1971-80; Anna Fuller Fund fellow, then Medical Research Council fellow, Medical Research Council of Molecular Biology, 1969-71; Researcher effects of acridines on T4 DNA replication, mutants, precursors of tRNA processing by catalytic RNA and ribonuclease function; tutor Radcliffe College, 1968-69; Damon Runyon Memorial Fund cancer research fellow in molecular biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1967-69; Teaching assistant, Columbia University, New York, New York, 1960-62.
Affiliations
"Fellow AAAS; mem. Am. Soc. Biol. Chemists, Genetics Soc. Am., Nat. Acad. Scis., Am. Philos. Soc. (Rosenstiel award 1989)."
Awards
Sidney Altman has also won numerous Awards