American Philosophical Society
Member History

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International (1)
Resident (7)
Class
2. Biological Sciences[X]
1Name:  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.
 
2Name:  Dr. Pamela J. Bjorkman
 Institution:  California Institute of Technology
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  206. Physiology, Biophysics, and Pharmacology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1956
   
 
Pamela J. Bjorkman is the Max Delbrück Professor of Biology the California Institute of Technology. She was an HHMI Investigator from 1989-2015. She received a B.A. degree in chemistry from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Harvard University. As a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow in Don Wiley's laboratory, she solved the crystal structure of a human histocompatibility molecule. She continued her postdoctoral training at Stanford University with Mark Davis, where she worked on T cell receptors. Dr. Bjorkman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Fundamental Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute (shared with Don C. Wiley and Jack L. Strominger), the James R. Klinenberg Science Award from the Arthritis Foundation, the Gairdner Foundation International Award for achievements in medical science (shared with Don C. Wiley), and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Award (shared with Jack L. Strominger and Hans-Georg Rammensee). Dr. Bjorkman's laboratory is interested in protein-protein interactions, particularly those mediating immune recognition. The laboratory uses X-ray crystallography and biochemistry to study purified proteins, and is beginning to include confocal and electron microscopy (EM) to examine protein complexes in cells. Some of the work focuses upon homologs and mimics of class I MHC proteins. These proteins have similar three-dimensional structures but different functions, including immune functions (IgG transport by the neonatal Fc receptor, FcRn; evasion of the immune response by viral HMC mimics) and non-immune functions (regulation of iron or lipid metabolism by HFE and ZAG). Dr. Bjorkman's laboratory is also comparing the structures and functions of host and viral Fc receptors with RcRn.
 
3Name:  Dr. Judith Kimble
 Institution:  University of Wisconsin, Madison; Howard Hughes Medical Institute
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  202. Cellular and Developmental Biology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1949
   
 
How are cells controlled to grow or differentiate during animal development? Judith Kimble tackled that fundamental question in the developing germline of a small nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. Early in her career she identified the somatic niche that promotes germline growth during development. Since then she discovered that Notch signaling from the niche promotes continued mitosis at the expense of meiotic entry. More recently, she and collaborators have elucidated the molecular network that maintains germline stem cells and controls their balance between mitosis and meiotic entry. Remarkably this network also controls the sperm/oocyte decision, although the mechanism of that dual control is still being addressed. Dr. Kimble has become one of the most respected and creative developmental biologists by exploiting the power of genetics and molecular biology to unravel complex developmental phenomena. Based on her work and that of others, developmental biologists came to realize that embryos as different as worms, fruit flies and mammals share similar developmental mechanisms. Dr. Kimble is the Vilas Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she began as a faculty member in 1983; she is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1994. Dr. Kimble is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1995) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995) and holds a Ph. D. from the University of Colorado-Boulder.
 
4Name:  Dr. Stanley J. Korsmeyer
 Institution:  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Harvard Medical School
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  202. Cellular and Developmental Biology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1950
 Death Date:  March 31, 2005
   
5Name:  Sir Peter Morris
 Institution:  The Royal College of Surgeons of England; University of Oxford
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1934
 Death Date:  October 29, 2022
   
 
Sir Peter Morris supplemented his medical education in Melbourne, Australia, with training at Guy's Hospital in London and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He returned to the University of Melbourne and obtained a Ph.D. in immunology in 1972. From 1974-2001, he was the Nuffield Professor of Surgery, chairman of the Department of Surgery, and director of the Oxford Transplant Centre at the University of Oxford. In 2001 he became President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and chairman of the Council of the Institute of Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. He is also currently chairman of the British Heart Foundation and Director of the Centre for Evidence in Transplantation at the Royal College of Surgeons. His more than 700 papers deal with the entire field of clinical and experimental transplantation and immunology. He has contributed especially to the study of mechanisms of rejection, tolerance induction and pancreatic islet transplantation. He is one of the distinguished surgeon scientists of our time. In addition to his work in transplantation, in the earlier part of his career he made many contributions to knowledge of the association between HLA and disease, as well as playing a major part in the early anthropological studies of HLA around the Pacific rim. He is the editor of Kidney Transplantation: Principles and Practice, which is now in its 5th edition, and the widely acclaimed Oxford Textbook of Surgery, which is in its 2nd edition. Sir Peter Morris has received many honors, including the Medawar Medal, the Lister Medal and the Hunterian Medal. In 1996 he received knighthood from the Queen for services to medicine, and in 2004 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a foreign member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He served as president of the International Transplantation Society, the British Transplantation Society, the European Surgical Association and the International Surgical Society. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002.
 
6Name:  Dr. David M. Raup
 Institution:  University of Chicago
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1933
 Death Date:  July 9, 2015
   
 
David Raup was a paleontologist specializing in synoptic studies of fossil marine invertebrate animals. His research included biocyrstallography of echinoderm skeletons, modeling and simulation of growth and form in mollusks, and analysis of large data bases from the Phanerozoic fossil record with emphasis on the role of extinction in the history of life. His honors and awards included the Paleontological Society Medal and Schuchert Award and membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He had approximately 200 research papers to his credit as well as a textbook, Principles of Paleontology (with S.M. Stanley), and two trade books: The Nemesis Affair and Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? Dr. Raup held a B.Sc. from the University of Chicago and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He was Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Before joining the University of Chicago faculty, he taught at Caltech, Johns Hopkins and the University of Rochester and served as curator and Dean of Science at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. David Raup died July 9, 2015, at age 82 in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
 
7Name:  Dr. John B. Robbins
 Institution:  National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  209. Neurobiology
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1932
 Death Date:  November 27, 2019
   
 
John B. Robbins received an M.D. from New York University in 1959. He was a guest scientist at the Weizmann Institute for Science, Israel (1965-66), then became assistant to associate professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1967-70). In 1970 he became the clinical director, then chief, of the Developmental Immunology Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. From 1974-83 he was director of the Bacterial Products Division, Bureau of Biologics, at the Federal Drug Administration. He returned to the National Institutes of Health in 1983 to serve as Chief of the Laboratory of Developmental and Molecular Immunity in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, where he is currently Senior Investigator. John Robbins made the most important advance in the past half century in preventing diseases caused by encapsulated bacteria such as the influenza bacillus and pneumococcus, among others. By chemically coupling to protein the capsular polysaccharides of pathogenic bacteria, which are poor antigens in infancy, he developed conjugate vaccines, one of which has all but eliminated infections caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b, the commonest cause of bacterial meningitis in childhood. Similar conjugate vaccines for preventing pneumoccocal infections in infancy and typhoid fever show promise of comparable efficacy. Robbins has also made fundamental contributions to the understanding of so-called "natural immunity." Dr. Robbins is the recipient of the E. Mead Johnson Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics (1975), the Albert Lasker Clinical Research Award (1996), and the Albert Sabin Gold Medal (2001). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002. John Robbins died November 27, 2019 in New York, New York at the age of 86.
 
8Name:  Dr. Eric M. Shooter
 Institution:  Stanford University School of Medicine
 Year Elected:  2002
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  208. Plant Sciences
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1924
 Death Date:  March 21, 2018
   
 
Eric M. Shooter received a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 1950. He worked at the Stanford University School of Medicine starting in 1968, serving as professor of genetics and professor of biochemistry (1968-75), chairman of the neurosciences Ph.D. program (1972-82) and chairman of neurobiology (1975-87). Dr. Shooter was known for his research on the isolation, characterization, and mechanism of action of nerve growth factor (NGF) and his identification and study of the gene responsible for the major inherited disease of the human peripheral nervous system, Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) 1A disease. He was the first to show that NGF and the neurotrophins mediate their actions through two distinct receptors and how these receptors cooperate in these processes, as well as identifying key genes, induced by NGF, that are important regulators of axonal growth. Dr. Shooter showed that the gene mediating CMT1A disease codes for a new myelin protein, PMP22, and that demyelination of peripheral nerves occurs because mutations in, or duplications of, this gene lead to aberrant trafficking of PMP22 in the Schwann cell. His discovery of this gene has led to the identification of other myelin genes involved in CMT diseases and laid the groundwork for understanding both the genetic basis of these diseases and their underlying mechanisms. Dr. Shooter received the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award in 1992, the Ralph W. Gerard Prize of the Society for Neuroscience in 1995, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience Research in 1997. He was a member of the Royal Society of London and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002. Eric M. Shooter died March 21, 2018 at the age of 93.
 
Election Year
2002[X]