Dr. Irwin A. Rose died on Tuesday in Deerfield, Mass. Dr. Rose won a Noble Prize in 2004 that he shared with two collaborators for lifting the lid off the secret behind how cells identify old and damaged proteins and transform them into pieces for new proteins. Dr. Rose died at 88 at the home of his son Frederick.

Dr. Rose took his last breath at the home of his son, Frederick, with whom he was living. He had shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two collaborators.

Scientists wanted to know how cells read the blueprints encoded in DNA and bring into use the information to manufacture proteins. “He was interested in the opposite: How are proteins destroyed. There were not very many people working on it”, Dr. Chernoff added in an interview on Tuesday. “I don’t think they particularly considered it an interesting question. But he thought it was an interesting question. And he was right”, said Dr. Jonathan Chernoff, the scientific director of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Dr. Rose’s studies helped researchers understand diseases like cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s and many types of cancer. Rose was born on July 16, 1926, in Brooklyn and his father Harry Royze was in flooring business.

Dr. Rose studied in Washington State College after high school, but he couldn’t continue his studies for sometime because of naval service in World War II. He completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1948 and a doctorate degree came to him in 1952.

Dr. Rose was a faculty member of the Yale School of Medicine’s biochemistry department, from 1954 to 1963, and also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.