Roger Yonchien Tsien (born February 1, 1952) is an American biochemist and a professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego. He was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry "for his discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) with two other chemists: Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Osamu Shimomura of Boston University and Marine Biological Laboratory.

Tsien was born in New York, in 1952. He grew up in Livingston, New Jersey and attended Livingston High School there.
He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and physics in 1972.
He received his PhD in physiology from Churchill College, University of Cambridge in 1977, with the doctoral dissertation The Design and Use of Organic Chemical Tools in Cellular Physiology (1976) supervised by Prof. Jeremy Sanders.
In 2004, Tsien was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine "for his seminal contribution to the design and biological application of novel fluorescent and photolabile molecules to analyze and perturb cell signal transduction."
In 2008, Tsien shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie for "the green fluorescent protein: discovery, expression and development."
Tsien had a number of accomplished engineers in his extended family, including his father Hsue-Chu Tsien who was a mechanical engineer and his mother's brothers who were engineering professors at MIT. Both of Tsien's parents came from Zhejiang Province, China. The famous rocket scientist Tsien Hsue-shen, regarded as the co-founding father of JPL of Caltech and later the director of the Chinese ballistic-missile and space programs, is a cousin of Tsien's father.

Awards and honors:

Roger Y. Tsien has received numerous honors and awards in his life, including:
National 1st Prize, Westinghouse Science Talent Search (1968)
Detur Prize, Harvard College (1969)
National Merit Scholarship, USA (1972)
Marshall Scholarship, British government (1972)
Comyns Berkeley Research Fellowship, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1977)
Gedge Prize, University of Cambridge (1978)
Searle Scholar, Searle Scholar program (1983)
Lamport Prize, New York Academy of Sciences (1986)
Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (1989)
Young Scientist Award, Passano Foundation (1991)
W. Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology, Columbia University (1991)
Bowditch Lectureship, American Physiological Society (1992)
Hans L. Falk Memorial Lectureship, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (1993)
Quastel Lectureship, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1994)
President's Lectureship, American Thoracic Society (1994)
Artois-Baillet-Latour Health Prize, Belgium (1995)
Gairdner Foundation International Award, Canada (1995)
Basic Research Prize, American Heart Association (1995)
Elected to the United States Institute of Medicine (1995)
Doctorate honoris causa, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (1995)
Roger Eckert Memorial Lecture, Göttingen Neurobiology Conference of the German Neuroscience Society (1995)
Faculty Research Lecturer, UC San Diego (1997)
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1998)
Elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences (1998)
Award for Innovation in High Throughput Screening, Society for Biomolecular Screening (1998)
Melvin Calvin Lectureship, UC berkeley (1999)
Herbert Sober Lectureship, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2000)
Pearse Prize, Royal Microscopical Society (2000)
ACS Award for Creative Invention, American Chemical Society (2002)
Christian B. Anfinsen Award, Protein Society (2002)
Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002)
Max Delbrück Medal, Max Delbrück Centrum für Molekulare Medizin, Berlin (2002)
Keith Porter Lectureship, American Society for Cell Biology (2003)
Konrad Bloch Lectureship, Harvard University (2003)
Wolf Prize in Medicine, Israel (2004)
Keio Medical Science Prize, Japan (2004)
UCSD Chancellor's Associates Award for Excellence in Science & Engineering Research, UC San Diego (2004)
Grass Foundation Lectureship, Society for Neuroscience (2004)
Perl Prize in Neuroscience, University of North Carolina (2004)
Associate Member, European Molecular Biology Organization (2005)
J.Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine, Robarts Research Institute, Canada (2005)
ABRF Award, Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (2006)
Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in the Basic Medical Sciences, Brandeis University (2006)
Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society, UK (2006)
BioPharma Leadership Award, the 6th Annual San Diego BioPharma Conference, San Diego, California (2007)
US Department of Defense (DoD) Breast Cancer Innovator Award
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Sweden (2008)
E.B. Wilson Medal, American Society for Cell Biology (2008)
Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (HonFRSC), UK (2008)
Honorary Academician, Academia Sinica (2008)
February 18th, 2009, Roger Tsien Day, in the City of San Diego, California, USA
Distinguished Science and Technology Award, The 2009 Asian American Engineers of the Year (AAEoY) Award (April 2009)
Lifetime Innovation Award, UC San Diego (May 20, 2009)
AHA Distinguished Scientists, American Heart Association (2009)
Molecular Imaging Achievement Award, Society of Molecular Imaging (2009)
Doctor of Science honoris causa, The University of Hong Kong (2009)
Doctor of Science honoris causa, Chinese University of Hong Kong (2009)
The 1st Academia Sinica Lecturer (the highest honor of the academy), Dec 2009
General President Gold Medal, the 97th Indian Science Congress, India (January 3rd, 2010)
Spiers Memorial Award, Royal Society of Chemistry, UK (2010)
The 2010 National Lecturer of the Biophysical Society (the highest honor of the society)