Class
• | 2. Biological Sciences | [X] |
Subdivision
• | 200 |
(1)
| • | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry |
(64)
| • | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology |
(35)
| • | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology |
(39)
| • | 204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology |
(34)
| • | 205. Microbiology |
(22)
| • | 206. Physiology, Biophysics, and Pharmacology |
(13)
| • | 207. Genetics |
(40)
| • | 208. Plant Sciences |
(33)
| • | 209. Neurobiology |
(37)
| • | 210. Behavioral Biology, Psychology, Ethology, and Animal Behavior |
(14)
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| 21 | Name: | Dr. David Baltimore | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 209. Neurobiology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1938 | | | | | David Baltimore has had a long and distinguished career as a creative scientist, gifted administrator and effective spokesperson on social and civic aspects of science. His research on virology and cancer has over the years been of extraordinary importance and includes the co-discovery of reverse tanscriptase with Howard Temin. In 1975, at the age of 37, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and he has also received the Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunology (1971), the Gairdner Foundation Annual Award (1974) and the National Medal of Science (1999). Dr. Baltimore founded and served as the first Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a premier research facility, while also serving for over 25 years on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty. In 1990 Dr. Baltimore was appointed president of Rockefeller University, and in 1997 he accepted the same position at the California Institute of Technology, where he served as president until 2006. He continues to serve Caltech as President Emeritus and Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology and maintains a research laboratory dedicated to the use of gene therapy to treat cancer and HIV infection, transcriptional regulation and cell cycle controls. He was recently awarded Research!America's Builders of Science Award recognizing leaders in medical and health research. | |
22 | Name: | Thomas Barbour | | Year Elected: | 1937 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1885 | | Death Date: | 1/8/46 | | | |
23 | Name: | Philip Bard | | Year Elected: | 1959 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1898 | | Death Date: | 4/5/77 | | | |
24 | Name: | Elso S. Barghoorn | | Year Elected: | 1978 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1915 | | Death Date: | 1/27/84 | | | |
25 | Name: | Dr. Cornelia Isabella Bargmann | | Institution: | Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Rockefeller University | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 208. Plant Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1961 | | | | | Cornelia I. Bargmann is currently both an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at Rockefeller University. Born in Virginia, she received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. She won the Richard Lounsbery Award in Biology and Medicine from the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2012, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2013. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2002) and the National Academy of Sciences (2003).
Cori Bargmann is recognized internationally through her elegant work on neural development and behavior using a tiny roundworm, C. elegans. The worm has become a key model organism in biomedical research because, having just 302 neurons, it is possible to know the detailed wiring of the nervous system on a cellular level and deduct the worm's behavior from its circuit. With the complete genome available, precise genetic manipulation can modify circuits and behavior. Insights gained from this powerful approach, on sensory perception, navigation, oxygen sensing, feeding behavior, and stress response, can now be used to guide research on the complexities of the human disorders such as dyslexia, epilepsy, and autism. Cori is a brilliant individual with a passion for science and scholarship and a generous and beloved person. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
26 | Name: | Dr. Clyde Frederick Barker | | Institution: | American Philosophical Society; University of Pennsylvania | | Year Elected: | 1997 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | | | Clyde F. Barker is a native of Salt Lake City and a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Cornell University, and Cornell University Medical College. His internship and residency in surgery were at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has served his entire academic and professional career. Following residency training he was a fellow in vascular surgery and then a postdoctoral fellow in medical genetics under Rupert Billingham, studying transplantation biology. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 and became Professor of Surgery in 1973. From 1966 to 2001 he was Chief of Transplantation Surgery and, from 1982 to 2001, Chief of the Division of Vascular Surgery. From 1983 to 2001 he was the John Rhea Barton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery, and Director of the Harrison Department of Surgical Research. He is now Donald Guthrie Professor of Surgery. The Clyde F. Barker Transplant House at University of Pennsylvania Hospital is named in his honor.
Clyde Barker’s research interests have been primarily in transplantation, especially transplantation of the kidney and pancreas and of isolated pancreatic islets. His research was continuously funded for more than 25 years by grants from the National Institutes of Health, including an NIH Merit Award from 1987-95. He has published more than 400 scientific papers and has served on 12 editorial boards, including the Journal of Surgical Research, Diabetes, Transplantation, Archives of Surgery, Surgery, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, and The Annals of Surgery.
Clyde Barker is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the Association of American Physicians. He has been President of the American Society of Transplantation Surgeons, the International Society of Surgery, and the American Surgical Association. He has served as visiting professor at 80 different universities and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He is the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the American College of Surgeons and the Society of University Surgeons, the 2007 Jonathan E. Rhoads Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Medicine, the Thomas E. Starzl Prize in 2009, and the 2010 Medawar Prize from the Transplantation Society. The Medawar Prize is recognized as the world’s highest award dedicated to the outstanding contributions in the field of transplantation. In 2010 he was awarded the American Philosophical Society’s Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities in recognition of his Jayne Lecture delivered to the members of the Society at its 2007 November Meeting and published in the Society’s Proceedings, March 2009, entitled "Thomas Eakins and His Medical Clinics." Clyde Barker was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1997 and has served on Council and as a Vice President. He served as the Society’s President from April 2011 through April 2017. | |
27 | Name: | Harley H. Bartlett | | Year Elected: | 1929 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1887 | | Death Date: | 2/21/60 | | | |
28 | Name: | Dr. Bonnie L. Bassler | | Institution: | Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Princeton University | | Year Elected: | 2012 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 209. Neurobiology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1962 | | | | | Bonnie L. Bassler is currently both an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and and Endowed Squibb Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Born in Illinois she received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1990. She has won a number of awards, including: the Eli Lilly and Company Research Award, American Society for Microbiology, 2006; the President's Distinguished Teaching Award, Princeton University, 2008; the Richard Lounsbery Award, National Academy of Sciences, 2011; the Shaw Prize, 2015; the Max Planck Research Award, 2016; the Dickson Prize in Medicine, 2018; and the 2020 Gruber Genetics Prize. In 2019 she became a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. She is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (president); the American Academy for Microbiology (chair, Board of Governors); the National Academy of Sciences, 2006; and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2007.
Bonnie Bassler discovered the universal use of chemical communication among bacteria, leading to a new paradigm of bacteria as interacting organisms. Early in her career, she discovered that bacteria use multiple chemical signals to communicate. She showed that this process, called quorum sensing, allows bacteria to coordinate behavior as a population and thereby act like multicellular organisms. Bassler subsequently made the seminal and startling discovery that bacteria communicate across species, and she identified the universal inter-species communication molecule. On the human health front, Bassler demonstrated that quorum sensing controls virulence in disease-causing bacteria, and that by manipulating quorum sensing she can halt virulence in globally-important pathogens. Her research paves the way for novel antibiotics targeting quorum sensing, and her group successfully demonstrated such therapeutic strategies. Bassler is internationally recognized for her passionate commitment to science education and outreach and to increasing gender and racial diversity in science, mathematics, and engineering. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2012. | |
29 | Name: | Stanhope Bayne-Jones | | Year Elected: | 1944 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1889 | | Death Date: | 2/20/70 | | | |
30 | Name: | Dr. Frank A. Beach | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | Year Elected: | 1961 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 210. Behavioral Biology, Psychology, Ethology, and Animal Behavior | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1911 | | Death Date: | 6/15/88 | | | |
31 | Name: | Dr. George W. Beadle | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | Year Elected: | 1945 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1903 | | Death Date: | 6/9/89 | | | |
32 | Name: | Dr. Cynthia M. Beall | | Institution: | Case Western Reserve University | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1949 | | | | | Cynthia Beall is a distinguished anthropologist who, along with her collaborator, Dr. Goldstein, has been interested in the impact of high altitude on the physiology and socio-cultural behavior of people living in such environments. She has studied populations in Tibet, the Andean countries and Ethiopia and is clearly one of the world's leading authorities on this subject. Since 1976 Dr. Beall has taught at Case Western Reserve University, where she has been S. Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology since 1994 and Professor of Anatomy since 1995. She was elected to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Anthropology and Cultural Studies in 2011. | |
33 | Name: | Dr. Alexander G. Bearn | | Institution: | American Philosophical Society | | Year Elected: | 1972 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1923 | | Death Date: | May 15, 2009 | | | | | Alexander G. Bearn was Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society from 1997 until his retirement in 2002. A physician, scientist and author, Dr. Bearn became a member of the Society in 1972 and served as a vice president from 1988-96. He received the Society's Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2001. The citation read "in recognition of distinguished contributions as a physician and scientist, represented by his service as Stanton Griffis Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College and Physician-in-Chief at the New York Hospital, as Senior Vice President for Medical and Scientific Affairs at Merck, Sharp and Dohme and as Editor of the American Journal of Medicine. The Society places on record its profound appreciation for his outstanding service, wise leadership and exemplary devotion to the life and work of the Society and its members. As Executive Officer, he revitalized the Society's meetings, instituted Mellon sabbatical fellowships in the humanities and social sciences, led the Society's gift support to record levels, created joint programs with scholarly societies in Sweden and the United Kingdom, oversaw the renovation of Philosophical Hall and the purchase of additional office space, launched a successful program of scientific exhibits, redefined the focus of the Society's publications and, not least, brought to these and all his dealings a warmth, grace and generosity of spirit which have enlivened and enriched the corporate life of the Society. In expressing its admiration and gratitude for Dr. Bearn's enlightened leadership, the Society also places on record its best wishes for a long and happy retirement and its anticipation of a long continuing association with him as one of the Society's most eminent members. It hereby awards to him its highest honor in recognition of his loyal and devoted service, and as a mark of the admiration, appreciation and affection of its members." Dr. Bearn was educated in England, and received his M.B., B.S. and M.D. degrees from the University of London. He came to the U.S. in 1951 for the first time to work at Rockefeller University for one year and soon embarked on the study of genetics of rare metabolic diseases. In 1964 he was named professor and senior physician. In 1966 Dr. Bearn was appointed professor and chairman of the department of medicine at Cornell University Medical College and physician-in-chief of New York Hospital. He established the first human genetics laboratory at the Medical College and with former Rockefeller colleagues initiated the joint M.D./Ph.D. program between the institutions. He remained at Cornell until 1979 when he was named senior vice-president for medical and scientific affairs of Merck, Sharpe & Dohme, International Division, a post he held until 1988. A frequent lecturer and author of numerous scientific articles, Dr. Bearn is also the author of Archibald Garrod and the Individuality of Man (Oxford, 1993), Sir Clifford Allbutt: Scholar and Physician (London, 2007), Sir Francis Richard Fraser; A Canny Scott Shapes British Medicine (Brighton, 2008). In 1970 Dr. Bearn joined the Rockefeller Board of Trustees and after serving for twenty-eight years, was elected emeritus trustee in 1998; he continues as a visiting professor and physician. In 2002 he received the David Rockefeller Award. Since 1987 Dr. Bearn has been a Trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and has also served as a trustee of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation and as an overseer of the Jackson Laboratory. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1972 and is a member of its Institute of Medicine and numerous other academies and societies, including the Harvey Society (president 1972-73) and the American Society of Human Genetics (president, 1971). | |
34 | Name: | Dr. Mary C. Beckerle | | Institution: | Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah | | Year Elected: | 2017 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1954 | | | | | Mary Beckerle, PhD, is CEO and Director of Huntsman Cancer Institute, a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center that is a leader in Cancer Genetics and Precision Prevention. She is a Distinguished Professor of Biology, Associate Vice President for Cancer Affairs, and holds the prestigious Jon M. Huntsman Presidential Endowed Chair at the University of Utah. Beckerle earned her PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and completed post-doctoral research at the University of North Carolina. An internationally recognized scientist focused on fundamental aspects of Cancer Cell Biology, Beckerle’s research program has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health. Beckerle’s laboratory has made seminal contributions toward understanding cell adhesion and cell migration. In recent years her team has focused on the mechanisms involved in communicating information from the cell surface to the cytoskeleton and the nucleus. In 2000, Beckerle was appointed as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Rothschild-Yvette Mayent Award Scholar at the Curie Institute in Paris. She received the Utah Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology in 2001, the Sword of Hope Award from the American Cancer Society in 2004, the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence, the University of Utah’s highest honor, in 2007, the 2018 Alfred G. Knudson Award in Cancer genetics, and the YWCA Utah 2018 Outstanding Achievement Award in Medicine and Health . Beckerle has served on numerous strategic planning and peer review committees for the National Institutes of Health. She is also a respected leader in science policy and practice, having served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology and on the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research. She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Advisory Board and serves on the Board of Directors of both Huntsman Corporation and Johnson & Johnson. In 2016, Beckerle was selected as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel appointed to guide Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, co-chairing the Precision revention and Early Detection Working Group. She is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the National Center for Biological Sciences in India, the Mechanobiology Institute in Singapore, and several National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers. Beckerle has been married to David Murrell since 1990; they have a son, David, who graduated from college in 2017. In addition to spending time with family and friends, Beckerle loves to cook, travel, garden, hike, and bike in the beautiful state of Utah. Mary Beckerle was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2017. | |
35 | Name: | Dr. Anna Katherine Behrensmeyer | | Institution: | National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | | | Anna K. “Kay’ Behrensmeyer is a paleontologist and geologist who is recognized as a pioneer in the field of taphonomy and the study of land environments and faunas through geological time, with particular focus on the paleoecology of human evolution in Africa. She is originally from Quincy, Illinois and earned her undergraduate degree in geology from Washington University, St. Louis, and her doctorate in vertebrate paleontology and sedimentology from the Department of Geological Sciences, Harvard University. After post-doctoral positions at UC Berkeley and Yale University and an interval of teaching at UC Santa Cruz, in 1981 she became a Research Curator in Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. She has served as Acting Associate Director for Science at NMNH (1993-96), co-Director of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems (ETE) Program since 1988, and Deep Time Initiative Lead Scientist since 2014. Her research uses geology, paleontology, and ecology to investigate the paleoecology of land environments, and she has worked in time intervals ranging from the Permian to the Pleistocene in North America, Africa, and Pakistan. Through experiments and field observations in both modern and past environments, she has built understanding of processes that affect organic remains and control the information content of the fossil record. Much of her work has been collaborative and focused on synergizing team efforts to investigate ecological change through geological time. She has been involved with museum-based education and outreach and was a member of the exhibit core time for the recently renovated Deep Time Fossil Hall at NMNH. Awards include the 2016 R.C Moore Medal (SEPM), the 2018 Romer-Simpson Medal (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology), the 2018 Paleontological Society Medal, and the 2019 G.K. Warren Prize (National Academy of Sciences). She also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Kay lives in Arlington, Virginia, and is married to William F. Keyser. | |
36 | Name: | Francis G. Benedict | | Year Elected: | 1910 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1871 | | Death Date: | 5/14/57 | | | |
37 | Name: | Dr. Seymour Benzer | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | Year Elected: | 1962 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 209. Neurobiology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1921 | | Death Date: | November 30, 2007 | | | |
38 | Name: | Dr. May R. Berenbaum | | Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Living
| | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | May Berenbaum is one of the most original biologists in the country. An ingenious experimentalist, she has long studied the interactions of two of the primary organisms on the planet: insects and plants. In doing so, she has uncovered the mechanisms by which plants fend off insects and insects circumvent these barriers. A prolific author and exquisite speaker, she has written five books, including the classic Bugs in the System: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs (1994). Dr. Berenbaum received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1980 and currently serves as a professor and head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois. She was one of the youngest biologists in the National Academy of Sciences at the time of her election.
She has been honored with many awards, including the George Mercer and the Robert H. MacArthur Awards of the Ecological Society of America, the E.O. Wilson Naturalist Award from the American Society of Naturalists, and Silverstei-Simeone Award from the International Society for Chemical Ecology. She won the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award from the American Association of the Advancement of Science in 2009, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2011, and the National Medal of Science in 2014. Dr. Berenbaum's weekly radio program on insects commands a wide audience, as does her annual "Insect Horror Film Festival", which draws aficionados from all over the world. In 2018 it was announced that she would become Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, beginning January 1, 2019. | |
39 | Name: | Dr. Paul Berg | | Institution: | Stanford University | | Year Elected: | 1983 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1926 | | Death Date: | February 15, 2023 | | | | | Paul Berg is an acknowledged leader in the study of gene transfer from bacteria to viruses to cells of higher organisms. He witnessed firsthand the history of recombinant DNA research and regulation, having been in the forefront of both movements since he was a young man. He became a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine in 1959, when he was 33. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences before the age of 40, and he gained early recognition and influence when he delineated the key steps in which DNA produces proteins. Dr. Berg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980 for his work with DNA. In the mid-1970s, the National Academy of Sciences asked him to explore the safety of recombinant DNA technology. He responded with the historic "Berg letter," calling for a moratorium on recombinant DNA research until safety issues could be addressed. He was one of the key organizers of the international forum on recombinant DNA technology, the Asilomar Conference, which took place in February of 1975. One hundred leading scientists met at the conference to discuss the potential risks of gene-splicing experiments. The ensuing dialogue resulted in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines published a year later, a milestone of responsible self-regulation in science. Dr. Berg's laboratory continued to work with recombinant DNA techniques throughout the 1980s. In 1985, he became director of the New Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. In 1991, Dr. Berg was named head of the NIH's influential Human Genome Project. | |
40 | Name: | Dr. Howard C. Berg | | Institution: | Harvard University | | Year Elected: | 2002 | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | Subdivision: | 206. Physiology, Biophysics, and Pharmacology | | Residency: | Resident | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | Birth Date: | 1934 | | Death Date: | December 30, 2021 | | | | | Howard Berg received a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1964, was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows (1963-66), and remained at Harvard as an associate professor of biology and chairman of the Board of Tutors in Biochemical Sciences until 1970. He then moved to the University of Colorado, serving as professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and department chairman until 1979 when he became a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology. In 1986 he returned to Harvard University and is currently professor of molecular and cellular biology and professor of physics, and a member of the Rowland Institute. Howard Berg was a chemist (B.S., Caltech); a medical student (two years at the Harvard Medical School); and then a graduate student in physics and Junior Fellow. As a physicist he worked with Norman Ramsey on the atomic hydrogen maser and with Ed Purcell on what is now called sedimentation field-flow fractionation. In 1968 he became interested in the motile behavior of bacteria. He has made many seminal contributions to understanding the biophysics of motility. Among other things, he and coworkers showed, via three-dimensional tracking, that E. coli executes a biased random walk and that bacterial flagella rotate: they do not wave or beat. This surprising conclusion has led Howard Berg to study the structure, genetics and physiology of the remarkable flagellar motor. Also, he has figured out how spirochetes swim, what bacterial flagella actually do when cells run and tumble and, with Ed Purcell, he developed the basic theory of the physics of chemoreception. His book Random Walks in Biology (1993), mostly about diffusion, has become a classic. His writings on life at low Reynolds numbers are great science and illustrate his intellectual reach: from pure physics to true biological understanding. His significant contributions to science reflect an approach to biological problems of a very perceptive biologist with the mind-set of a talented physicist. His inquisitiveness and productivity are models of scientific inquiry. A more recent book, E. coli in Motion (2004), reviews the field of bacterial chemotaxis. Dr. Berg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2008 he received the Biophysical Society's annual award for Outstanding Investigator in Single Molecule Biology. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002. | |
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