Arthur Lesk - Biography#

Lesk received a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1961. He received his doctoral degree from Princeton University in 1966. He also received a master's degree from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1999.

Prior to joining Penn State during the fall semester of 2003, Lesk was on the faculty of the clinical school at the University of Cambridge from 1990 to 2003. He was a group leader in the biocomputing program at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, from 1987 to 1990, where he helped to establish the first European Department of Bioinformatics. He was a visiting scientist at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom, between 1977 and 1990, and a professor of chemistry at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey from 1971 to 1987. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He has held visiting fellowships at the University of Otago in New Zealand and Monash University in Australia and has come back every year to Europe at least twice (until Covid-19) to hold schools and seminars in Europe (e.g. Uppsala, Umea, Pisa, Bologna, Cambridge, Lausanne). He was Director of the Advanced Course 'Proteins: Integration of Life's Functions', in San Sabastian, Spain, in 1997.

Lesk used to be chair of the Task Group on Biological Macromolecules for the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), which aimed to foster worldwide coordination of databases in molecular biology to enhance their quality and utility. He has given invited lectures and presentations related to his research at universities and professional conferences worldwide.

Lesk is a member of the American Physical Society.

He has published 189 scientific articles and 10 books related to his research with 23511 citations, 8565 reads and an h-factor of 61.

He is in constant demands to give talks, seminar and lectures.

At the age of 81, he is still completely active both in teaching and in research. He has just published a new book in Protein Science.