American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Residency
Resident[X]
Class
2. Biological Sciences[X]
1Name:  Dr. Julius Adler
 Institution:  University of Wisconsin, Madison
 Year Elected:  1989
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  209. Neurobiology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1930
   
 
Born in Germany in 1930, Julius Adler received his A.B. from Harvard University in 1952 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin with Henry Lardy in 1957. Subsequently he did postdoctoral studies with Arthur Kornberg at Washington University (1957-59) and with Dale Kaiser at Stanford University (1959-60). In 1960 he became assistant professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin. He became professor of biochemistry and genetics in 1966 and Edwin Bret Hart Professor in 1972 and is presently emeritus professor of biochemistry and genetics at Wisconsin. Dr. Adler is known for discovering the mechanism of bacterial chemotaxis, the swimming of Escherichia coli towards higher concentration of some compounds and away from others. He discovered its chemoreceptors, which are methylatable proteins. Dr. Adler and his students studied the structure of the bacterial flagellum and its basal body and found the membrane potential to be the source of energy for motility. He and his group discovered the proteins that mediate between the receptors and the flagella by isolating mutants lacking each of them. Dr. Adler has continued to study the basis for response to conflicting stimuli and is presently conducting research on sensory reception and decision making in Drosophila fruit flies. Adler is the recipient of the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Otto Warburg Medal by the German Society for Biological Chemistry in 1986. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
 
2Name:  Dr. Günter Blobel
 Institution:  Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Rockefeller University
 Year Elected:  1989
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  202. Cellular and Developmental Biology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1936
 Death Date:  February 18, 2018
   
 
German-born cell biologist Günter Blobel was known for communicating difficult concepts in a clear and interesting way. He contributed pioneering work that shed light on diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer's and AIDS and provided the basis for bioengineered drugs such as insulin. In 1999 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery that proteins have signals that govern their movement and position in the cell. Each protein, he found, has its own "zip code" that determines whether the protein is transported across or integrated into a specific cellular membrane. Dr. Blobel received his medical degree from the University of Tübingen in Germany in 1960, earned a doctorate in oncology from the University of Wisconsin in 1967 and became a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University protein laboratory, where he had been a professor since 1976. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Society for Cell Biology, he had also been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1986. Dr. Blobel died on February 18, 2018, at the age of 81 in New York City.
 
3Name:  Dr. Floyd E. Bloom
 Institution:  The Scripps Research Institute
 Year Elected:  1989
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  208. Plant Sciences
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1936
   
 
As chairman of the Scripps Research Department of Neuropharmacology between 1989-2000 and 2002-05, Floyd Bloom has for some years been at the forefront of neuroscience research. A professor at Scripps from 1983 until his appointment as chairman, he was among the first to determine the distribution of neuronal circuits in the brain by chemically labeling the transmitter characteristics of neurons in each circuit. Such evidence established the fact that signaling in the brain may be chemical as well as electrical. By applying newly developed methods, he has investigated brain-specific proteins and conducted pioneering studies on nervous system disorders of genetic origin. Presently professor emeritus at Scripps Research Institute, Dr. Bloom has also devoted substantial effort to the work of Neurome, Inc., the La Jolla-based biotechnology company dedicated to discovery and development of solutions for human neurodegenerative diseases, which he co-founded in 2000. Dr. Bloom has also served as editor-in-chief of Science and as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1977 and is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Janssen Award in the Basic Sciences and the Pasarow Award in Neuropsychiatry. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine. He has over 600 publications to his credit, including The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology.
 
4Name:  Dr. Joseph Grafton Gall
 Institution:  Carnegie Institution of Washington
 Year Elected:  1989
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  202. Cellular and Developmental Biology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1928
   
 
Joseph Gall is an outstanding cytogeneticist known for his research on the organization and structure of genes along animal chromosomes and for developing methods for detecting individual genes on chromosomes. He is a co-discoverer of gene amplification, which was later found to be an important concomitant of some cancers. Dr. Gall received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1952 and has taught at the University of Minnesota and at Yale University, where he was Ross Granville Harrison Professor of Biology and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Chemistry from 1964-83. He has been a staff member in the department of embryology at the Carnegie Institute of Washington since 1983 and American Cancer Society Professor of Developmental Genetics since 1984. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the American Society for Cell Biology's E.B. Wilson Medal in 1983. A scholar of the history and use of microscopes and a collector of scientific books, especially those relating to cytology, Dr. Gall is a true naturalist with an encyclopedic knowledge and curiosity about living things.
 
Election Year
1989[X]