Alan Hall

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Alan Hall FRS (1952–2015) was a British cell biologist and a professor who led the cell biology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999.

He was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, and studied chemistry at Oxford University. He began a PhD at Oxford but moved with his mentor to Harvard, where he earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1977. He did postdoctoral work in molecular biology at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Zurich. His PhD work on the enzyme beta-lactamase led to a Nature paper in 1976. He also published early research on triosephosphate isomerase (TIM).

In 1981, Hall joined the Institute for Cancer Research in London, where he and Christopher Marshall made key advances in cell signaling, especially the roles of the Rho and Ras families of small GTPases in cell growth, shape and movement. In 1982 his team helped identify transforming DNA sequences in human cancer cell lines, later shown to be the N-ras gene. In 1986, they studied mutant forms of the N-ras-encoded p21 protein and found that GTPase activity did not predict transforming ability.

By 1992, Hall showed that Rho controls the formation of focal adhesions and stress fibers in fibroblasts, and identified lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) as a serum factor driving this process. He also explored Rac, another GTPase, and its role in actin organization and membrane changes.

In 1993, Hall moved to University College London to help create a new Medical Research Council center for molecular cell biology and became its director in 2000. In 2002, he demonstrated that the Gq protein can activate the Rho signaling pathway via receptors on the cell surface.

Two years later, Hall moved to the United States to become chair of the cell biology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His work linked GTPase signaling to cell behavior and cancer, and he trained many scientists around the world.

Hall received several major prizes, including the Feldberg Foundation Prize (1993), the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2005), the Novartis Medal (2005), and the Canada Gairdner International Award (2006).