Bruce Michael Alberts (born April 14, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American biochemist and the Emeritus Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education at the University of California, San Francisco.

He is known as an original author of the "canonical, influential, and best-selling scientific textbook" Molecular Biology of the Cell,[4] and served as Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine.

The summer's research led to the publication of two successful papers on mismatch errors in the helical structures of DNA and RNA,[13][14] and Alberts decided to continue on in biophysics.

"[1] After graduating, Alberts went to the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire[16] at the University of Geneva as a postdoctoral fellow, and worked with Richard H. Epstein on genes involved in DNA replication of phage T4.

[1] In 1976, Alberts accepted a position as professor and vice-chair of the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.

[16] From 1985 to 1990, he was chair of the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, and from 1990 to 1993 he again held an American Cancer Society Research Professorship.

[23] He has served in different capacities on a number of advisory and editorial boards, including as chair of the Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council.

[4] Prior to his election as president of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995 he was president-elect of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

[31] From 2000 to 2009, Alberts was the co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, an advisory institution in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of fifteen science academies from around the world.

In his June 4, 2009, speech at Cairo University, US President Barack Obama announced a new Science Envoy program as part of a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world."

In January 2010, Bruce Alberts, Ahmed Zewail, and Elias Zerhouni became the first US science envoys to Islam, visiting Muslim-majority countries from North Africa to Southeast Asia.