He is also considered the co-discoverer of the ubiquitous process of DNA excision repair along with his mentor, Richard Setlow, and Paul Howard-Flanders.
[1] Having an interest in electronics from youth, Hanawalt earned an honorable mention in the 1949 Westinghouse Science Talent Search, receiving a scholarship to attend Deep Springs College.
[2] He undertook three years of postdoctoral study at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and at the California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at Stanford in 1961.
Such damage occurs as a consequence of exposure to environmental radiations and genotoxic chemicals, but also to endogenous oxidations and the intrinsic instability of DNA.
[1] DNA repair is important for protecting against cancer and some aspects of ageing in humans, and its deficiency has been implicated in the etiology of a number of hereditary diseases.
He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and as a Senior Editor for the journal, Cancer Research.
[1] He won the International Mutation Research Award for Excellence in Scientific Achievement in 1987, and the Princess Takamatsu Cancer Foundation Annual Lectureship in Japan in 1999 and he was more recently a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University.