Roderick MacKinnon's Birth Card: The 6 of Diamonds

In the record

Roderick MacKinnon (born February 19, 1956) is an American biophysicist, neuroscientist, and businessman. The birth-card coordinate for February 19 is the 6 of Diamonds — a calendar position, not a forecast of the 2003 Chemistry prize.

Nobel Prize record

• 2003 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry — for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels

The 6 of Diamonds coordinate

Roderick MacKinnon's birthday maps to the 6 of Diamonds (The Generous Provider). Card Blueprints treats that as a 365-day coordinate: solar value = 55 − (2 × month + day), and the year is unused. It is not a prediction about a Nobel Prize and not a verdict on Roderick MacKinnon. The card's own language, quoted as system copy rather than biography: You move resources toward other people without erasing your own claim.

Live 6 of Diamonds meaning page

Roderick MacKinnon in the public record

He is a professor of molecular neurobiology and biophysics at Rockefeller University who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Peter Agre in 2003 for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels. MacKinnon was born in Burlington, Massachusetts and initially attended the University of Massachusetts Boston. MacKinnon then transferred to Brandeis University after one year, and there he received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1978, studying calcium transport through the cell membrane for his honors thesis in Christopher Miller's laboratory. It was also at Brandeis where MacKinnon met his future wife and working-colleague Alice Lee, who is an organic chemist. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Brandeis University, MacKinnon entered medical school at Tufts University. He got his M.D. in 1982 and received training in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He did not feel satisfied enough with the medical profession, so in 1986 he returned to Christopher Miller's laboratory at Brandeis for postdoctoral studies. In 1989 he was appointed assistant professor at Harvard University where he studied the interaction of the potassium channel with a specific toxin derived from scorpion venom, acquainting himself with methods of protein purification and X-ray crystallography.

Summarised from the lead section of the Wikipedia article Roderick MacKinnon (CC BY-SA 4.0). No biographical facts were written for this page beyond that article.

Where the record meets the 3 of Spades

A card is a calendar coordinate, not a cause. What follows sets one line of the card's own published language beside one sentence of the sourced record, paired by a documented rule. It is a resemblance offered for the reader to weigh — not a claim about Roderick MacKinnon, and not a forecast of a Nobel Prize.

You stay with the hard feeling long enough to learn it, then you let the day continue.

He did not feel satisfied enough with the medical profession, so in 1986 he returned to Christopher Miller's laboratory at Brandeis for postdoctoral studies.

Paired on shared wording: enough, feel.

Also on the record

1. In 1996 he moved to Rockefeller University as a professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics where he started to work on the structure of the potassium channel.
2. These channels are of particular importance to the nervous system and the heart and enable potassium ions to cross the cell membrane.
3. Potassium channels demonstrate a seemingly counterintuitive activity: they permit the passage of potassium ions, whereas they do not allow the passage of the much smaller sodium ions.
4. Before MacKinnon's work, the detailed molecular architecture of potassium channels and the means by which they conduct ions were only generally known and indirectly inferred.

Other laureates with this card

• Ben R. Mottelson — 1975 Physics
• Carl von Ossietzky — 1935 Peace
• Carlos Saavedra Lamas — 1936 Peace
• Carol W. Greider — 2009 Physiology or Medicine
• Charles J. Pedersen — 1987 Chemistry
• David J. Gross — 2004 Physics
• Elinor Ostrom — 2009 Economic Sciences
• J. Robin Warren — 2005 Physiology or Medicine
• James M. Buchanan Jr. — 1986 Economic Sciences
• James P. Allison — 2018 Physiology or Medicine
• Jennifer A. Doudna — 2020 Chemistry
• Johannes Stark — 1919 Physics
• 15 more laureates share this card.

FAQ

What is Roderick MacKinnon's birth card?

The 6 of Diamonds. February 19 maps to that card through the public Card Blueprints formula. The year of birth is not used.

Does a birth card predict a Nobel Prize?

No. These pages are coordinates, not fortune-telling. A birth card names a calendar day in a 52-card year. It does not forecast prizes, character, or fate.

Where do Roderick MacKinnon's dates come from?

Birth date 1956-02-19 is the Nobel Prize API v2.1 day-precision date, verified against Wikidata P569 (CC0, day precision, Gregorian preferred). The two sources match. Year-only Nobel dates and Nobel↔Wikidata conflicts are dropped, not guessed. Page hooks and evidence come from the Wikipedia REST summary (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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