Biographies of Silicon Valley protagonists

A History of Silicon Valley

This biography is an appendix to my book "A History of Silicon Valley"

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Michael West

Michael West (????, 1953?) studied physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York State) until 1976 and biology at Andrews University (Michigan) until 1982 before graduating from Baylor College of Medicine (Texas) in 1989. He then joined the University of Texas' Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. In 1990 he started Geron with funding from oil-industry tycoon Miller Quarles who wanted a "cure" against aging (in other words, immortality). In 1992 the company relocated to Menlo Park where West had found more venture capital, and in 1998 its scientists, led by Calvin Harley, would isolate human embryonic stem cells (but never get any closer to marketing immortality). In october 2001 the Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced that it had cloned the world's first human embryo. ACT was a spin-off of the University of Massachusetts founded by James Robl whose lab there had been the first to clone calves from somatic cells. The team included Michael West, who had joined ACT in 1998. West continued his stem-cell research at BioTime in Alameda (near Oakland) while teaching at U.C. Berkeley.

History of Silicon Valley | Biographies | History pages | Editor | Correspondence