Sidney Altman is the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale University and an Origins Project Distinguished Visiting Professor at Arizona State University. He won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discoveries concerning the catalytic properties of RNA. His discoveries opened up new fields of scientific research and biotechnology and caused scientists to rethink old theories of how cells function. They also led to new hypotheses about the emergence of RNA on Earth and the possibility that RNA was the molecule that gave rise to the Earth’s first life forms.