Class
| • | 2. Biological Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Renato Dulbecco | | | Institution: | Salk Institute | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 202. Cellular and Developmental Biology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1914 | | | Death Date: | February 19, 2012 | | | | | | |
A distinguished research professor and president emeritus of the Salk Institute, Italian-born Renato Dulbecco made fundamental contributions to understanding the uncontrolled growth of cells that occurs in cancer. He is best known for his discovery that tumor viruses cause cancer by inserting their own genes into the chromosomes of infected cells. This finding was one of the first clues to the genetic nature of cancer and led to Dr. Dulbecco being awarded a Nobel Prize in 1975. Dr. Dulbecco subsequently began studying the origins and progression of tumors of the breast, using monoclonal antibodies, tools of molecular biology that can identify cells by their chemical signatures, to characterize the tumor cells. In 1986 Dr. Dulbecco launched the idea of studying all human genes, starting the worldwide Human Genome Project. He is the author of The Design of Life (1987), a work that represents, in his words, "the exciting developments that have taken place in biology with accelerated rhythm since the '50s." The last chapter of this book, "A Life Odyssey," is a magisterial summary of the origin and history of living things over the past nearly four billion years. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Eugene Patrick Kennedy | | | Institution: | Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1919 | | | Death Date: | September 22, 2011 | | | | | | |
Eugene Patrick Kennedy was born in Chicago in 1919. He enrolled at De Paul University in 1937 as a chemistry major and then went to the University of Chicago in 1941 for graduate training in organic chemistry. To pay his tuition, Dr. Kennedy also got a job in the chemical research department of Armour and Company, one of the large meat packers in Chicago. As part of the war effort, his job at Armour was to assist in the large scale fractionation of bovine blood to obtain pure bovine serum albumin. It was believed that the bovine serum albumin might be useful for treating shock in soldiers on the battlefield. However, by the end of 1942, hope had faded that bovine serum albumin would be an effective treatment, and the Red Cross started to collect blood from volunteers instead. Armour opened a new facility in Fort Worth, Texas for the fractionation of human blood from donors, and Kennedy was sent to Fort Worth to assist in this effort. He remained in Texas until 1945, when the war was nearing its end and large amounts of human plasma proteins had been stockpiled. Returning to the University of Chicago, Dr. Kennedy immediately transferred from the Department of Chemistry to the Department of Biochemistry. His experience on the plasma project had led to a new appreciation of biochemistry. After finishing graduate school, Dr. Kennedy went to the University of California, Berkeley, to work with Horace A. Barker, who had just discovered that soluble extracts of Clostridium kluyveri cells could produce short-chain fatty acids from ethyl alcohol. Although the initial discovery had already been made, there was much to be learned about these extracts, and Dr. Kennedy aided in this effort. In 1950, he joined Fritz Lipmann at Harvard Medical School. He then returned to the University of Chicago in 1951, after being given a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and the newly organized Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research. In 1959, he was invited to become a Hamilton Kuhn Professor and head of the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Harvard Medical School. Over the course of his career, Dr. Kennedy made major contributions to the biosynthesis of phospholipids, the basic component of all membranes, and to our understanding of membrane function. He discovered the first step of phospholipid synthesis, the reaction of cytidine triphosphate and phosphorylcholine to form cytidine diphosphocholine, as well as the enzyme which catalyzes the reaction. It was Dr. Kennedy who found that a protein, permease, was responsible for the transport of sugars through the bacterial membrane. His research consistently elucidated the structure, localization and biosynthesis of oligosaccharides derived from membranes. Dr. Kennedy's interests also led him to investigate membrane biogenesis and function in bacteria, the translocation of membrane phospholipids, and periplasmic glucans and cell signaling in bacteria. He was the recipient of many honors including the Gairdner Foundation Award and the American Chemical Society's Paul Lewis Award. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Eugene Patrick Kennedy died on September 22, 2011, at the age of 92 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Kennedy was at Harvard as the Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Emeritus. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Elizabeth F. Neufeld | | | Institution: | David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | | | | |
Elizabeth Neufeld is a leading biochemist responsible for advancing the understanding of the function of the organelles within cells known as lysosomes, which are responsible for the disposal of many molecules that have completed their usefulness to the cell. Dr. Neufeld has made use of inborn defects in lysosomal enzymes and other "experiments of nature" to discover these mechanisms, and in the process she has uncovered methods of diagnosis and management of the disorders that have been of immense benefit to patients. An effective teacher and scientific collaborator, Dr. Neufeld earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. Currently professor emeritus of biological chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, she also worked for many years at the National Institutes of Health. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Neufeld is the recipient of awards such as the American Society of Human Genetics' William Allan Award (1982), the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award (1982) the Wolf Prize in Medicine (1988) and the National Medal of Science (1994). | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Peter Carey Nowell | | | Institution: | University of Pennsylvania | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | Death Date: | December 26, 2016 | | | | | | |
A professor of pathology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1964 to his retirement in 2008, Peter Carey Nowell was a creative and distinguished scholar who was internationally recognized for discovery of the Philadelphia chromosome in granulocytic leukemia - the first constant chromosomal abnormality specifically associated with any form of cancer. This discovery led to the founding of an entirely new field of research: cancer cytogenetics. Some of Dr. Nowell's other important medical discoveries are less well known. He was the first to demonstrate that bone marrow transplantation could save lethally irradiated animals, and he was also the first to show that certain sugar-containing plant products (lectins) caused white blood cells to divide, a property that has been widely used in medical research. He also proposed a widely-accepted theory to explain the evolution of malignancy among the cells of tumors. With hundreds of publications to his credit, including more than a few "citation classics," Dr. Nowell was an academic leader who has served as both director of the cancer center and chairman of pathology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1952 he received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and he has worked there throughout his career. A past president of the American Society for Experimental Pathology, Dr. Nowell was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of awards such as the Leukemia Society of America's Robert de Villiers Award (1987), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's Fred W. Stewart Award (1989), and the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science (2009). Peter Nowell died December 26, 2016, at age 88. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Janet D. Rowley | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 207. Genetics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1925 | | | Death Date: | December 17, 2013 | | | | | | |
Janet Rowley received a Ph.B. in 1944, a B.S. in anatomy in 1946, and an M.D. in medicine in 1948, all at the University of Chicago. After working as attending physician at the Infant Welfare and Prenatal Clinics for the Montgomery County, Maryland Department of Public Health and later in clinics in Chicago, Dr. Rowley worked as a research fellow at the Dr. Julian D. Levinson Foundation, and as a clinical instructor in neurology at the University of Illinois School of Medicine in Chicago. Following a year as a National Institutes of Health special trainee in the radiobiology laboratory of the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, she returned to the University of Chicago in 1962 as a research associate and assistant professor. She was the Blum-Riese Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine, of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago since 1982. She was the cofounder and coeditor of the journal Genes, Chromosomes and Cancer and served on the editorial boards of many journals. Her laboratory analyzed the genetic consequences of the recurring chromosome abnormalities seen in human leukemia cells, including cloning several new genes at translocation breakpoints. She is currently investigating the pattern of gene expression and microRNA expression in various translocations to determine which differences have the greatest impact on all function and which are of diagnostic and prognostic importance and which are potential therapeutic targets. Dr. Rowley received many honors, including a National Medal of Science in 1998, the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research that same year (which she shared with APS members Alfred G. Knudson and Peter C. Nowell), the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the American Association for Cancer Research's Award for Liferime Achievement in 2010. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1993. She was awarded the Society's 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences "in recognition of her discovery of chromosomal translocations associated with cancer and of the range of basic research and clinical applications her continuing work makes possible, from identifying the genetic alterations that cause cancer to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer; and in recognition also of her exemplary leadership and mentorship in the world of bio-medical sciences." Janet Rowley died December 17, 2013, at the age of 88, at her home in Chicago. | |
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