Gregorio
Weber was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and completed the M.D. degree
in 1942 at the University of Buenos Aires. He received his Ph.D. in 1947
at the University of Cambridge, England, and continued independent research
there until 1953, when he was recruited by Professor Hans Krebs to join
the new Biochemistry Department at Sheffield University. In 1962, Dr. Weber
moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States.
Dr. Weber's many notable contributions in fluorescence span a wide range of principles and applications, from fundamental photophysics, to the development of instrumentation and methods for data analysis, and of probes for investigation of the structure and dynamics of proteins and membranes. Some of his notable achievements include the use of dansyl derivatives to determine the rotational diffusion of proteins, formulation of the addition law of fluorescence polarization, characterization of the ultraviolet fluorescence of the aromatic amino acids, demonstration of nanosecond time-scale fluctuations in proteins by oxygen quenching, and the development of high-pressure fluorescence spectroscopy to study biological membranes and protein assemblies, including viruses. Protein chemistry, clinical chemistry, genome sequencing, membrane biophysics, microscopy, and the imaging of vital processes in living cells are some of the areas where Dr. Weber's contributions have had important application.