Nobel laureate Irwin Rose has died at the age of 88. According to his family, Rose passed away in his sleep in Deerfield, Massachusetts early Tuesday.

Rose earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004, along with Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover. He spent a significant portion of his life at the University of California, Irvine and the community is deeply saddened at the loss of an exceptional scientist, but more so in saying goodbye to a colleague and a mentor.

When Rose retired in 1997, he accepted a special researcher position at the university's department of physiology and biophysics studying fumarase — an enzyme part of the citric acid cycle, which is how higher organisms convert food to energy. In spite of having already retired, Rose stuck to a rigorous routine, publishing one paper a year and working in the lab three or four times a week.

Previously, Rose earned his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago. He then spent a good chunk of his career working as a research scientist for Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center. It was during the late 1970s and early '80s that he worked with ubiquitin molecules, uncovering the process in which it breaks down old, damaged proteins.

This discovery of a "kiss of death" mechanism within cells revolutionized cell biology and ushered in a new means of understanding molecular activity in cancer as well as other diseases.

"Ernie is a truly brilliant and dedicated scientist — his work is his life," said Ann Skalka, basic sciences senior vice president for the Fox Chase Cancer Center, in 2005.

Rose was never interested in the fame and glory of getting a Nobel Prize. He simply did what he did best: research.

James Nowick, a UCI chemistry professor, recounted that on the day of winning the Nobel Prize, Rose didn't want to pick up his phone because of all the attention. He regularly went to department gatherings, thereby becoming friends as well as research partners with Nowick. Nowick said it was a lot of fun working with Rose, and he was impressed at how the Nobel laureate didn't rely on others to get his work done.

Rose was the third researcher from UCI to receive a Nobel Prize. In 1995, Frederick Reines was honored for his contribution to the field of physics while F. Sherwood Rowland was awarded for chemistry.