In 1985, after a decade of systematic studies on water channels in human red blood cells (RBC) performed
at “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Gheorghe Benga and
coworkers discovered the presence and location of the first water channel protein in the human (RBC) membrane
among polypeptides migrating in the region of 35-60 kDa on the electroforetogram of RBC membranes (Benga Gh,
Popescu O, Pop IV, Holmes R, Biochemistry, 25, 1535-1538, 1986). In this landmark publication Benga also indicated the way to further studies, by protein purification and reconstitution in lipid vesicles (liposomes). This work was extended (Benga Gh, Popescu O, Borza Victoria, Pop VI, Mure?an A, Mocsy I, Brain A, Wrigglesworth JM, Eur J Cell Biol 41: 252-262, 1986) and reviewed by Benga in several articles including a chapter in a book published in the USA (Benga Gh, (Ed) 1989. Water transport in biological membranes. CRC Press, Boca Raton).
In 1988, Peter Agre and coworkers (Denker BM, Smith BL, Kuhaida FP, Agre P, J. Biol. Chem. 1988, 263:15634-15642), while working on the rhesus blood group antigen at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, serendipitously isolated a new 28 kDa membrane protein from human red blood cells, called, CHIP28 (“channel forming integral membrane protein of 28 kDaltons); in addition to the 28 kDa component, this protein had a 35-60 kDa glycosylated component, the one detected in 1986 by the Benga’s group. Agre and coworkers suggested that “this new protein may play a role in linkage of the membrane skeleton to the lipid bilayer” (Smith BL, Agre P., J. Biol. Chem. 1991, 266:6407-6415).
Only in 1992, the Agre’s group suggested that “it is likely that CHIP28 is a functional unit of membrane water channels” (Preston G.M, Carroll TP, Guggino WB, Agre P, Science, 1992, 256:385-387). In this paper, they cited a paper of Benga and coworkers from 1983 (Benga Gh, Popescu O, Pop VI. 1983, Cell Biol Int Rep, 7: 807- 818), without mentioning their landmark 1986 papers or any of the reviews. In 1993 CHIP28 was renamed aquaporin 1 (the first water channel protein).
It is obvious and overwhelmingly documented from the facts presented above that the first water channel protein (aquaporin 1) was first discovered by the Romanian scientist Gheorghe Benga and his group in 1985 and reported in publications in 1986. They detected the glycosylated form of the protein (subsequently worked on by Agre’s group), which they correctly identified as playing the key role in water transport across RBC membrane.
In October 2003, Peter Agre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, “for the discovery of water channels”. An invited review of the history of the discovery of water channels proteins was published by Benga in September 2003, one month before the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded (Benga Gh, Cell Biol. Int. 2003, 27:701-709). The seminal contributions from 1986 of the Benga’s group, also mentioned in this review, were completely overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee.
After the announcement of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was released by Nobel Foundation Gheorghe Benga received a multitude of spontaneous messages (phone calls, E-mailed messages and faxed letters) from all over the world. The scientists who sent messages to Gheorghe Benga considered that in fact he discovered the first water channel protein in the red blood cell membranes (the protein later called aquaporin1) several years before Peter Agre and the chemical definition of this channel protein by Peter Agre has no more value than the first demonstration and labeling of the site in the red blood cell membrane where the water channel protein is located. As a result Gheorghe Benga wrote a PETITION, presented on October 18 th at the 6 th International
Symposium of Molecular Medicine (Hersonissos, Crete, Greece) that is now available at, where a full background to the controversy can be seen.. The priority of Gheorghe Benga’s group in the discovery of the first water channel protein has been mentioned in comments on the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Bradley D. Spotlight,
IJ, Kuchel P., Medical Journal Australia, 179: 611-613, 2003; Rogerund K. Kemipriset v?llar ny Nobelstrid, Dagens Nyheter, 10 Decembrie 2003; Strid kring medicinpriset....och kring kemipriset, Sydsvenska Dagbladet, December 11, 2003; Nobel mystery. Newsletter of King’s College, January 2004). More than 2000 supporters form dozens of countries, including a Nobel Laureate, have signed at astra.ro/benga. By now, many academic institutions, faculties, universities, scientific organizations and associations, research institutes, have recognized Gheorghe Benga as a discoverer of the first water channel protein before Pete r Agre.Considering the facts presented above, we agree to recognize Gheorghe Benga as a discoverer of the first water channel protein a few years before Peter Agre (2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry).
Ancestral origins
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement. The Homestead Act offered new arrivals from other countries the opportunity to stake and develop farms of 160 acres by simply working the land for five years. Although they were only in their teens or early twenties, my great grandparents individually left their villages in Norway and Sweden between 1875 and 1885 and migrated to western Minnesota and South Dakota. Similar to the protagonists in the epics of Ole Rolvaag and Vilhelm Moberg, they worked the rich farmland, married, raised families, and achieved prosperity unattainable at that time in Scandinavia.
Things changed for my parents' generation. My father, Courtland Agre, and his two sisters grew up in Wallace, a hamlet in eastern South Dakota where his parents ran the general store. Wallace was also the hometown of Hubert Humphrey, and while my aunt Pearl remembers baby-sitting young Hubert, my father, an ardent Republican, claimed that they never met. To accommodate their educational needs, my grandparents moved the family to a larger town and ultimately to Minneapolis where Dad earned his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota. He contributed to the U.S. effort in World War II by working as an experimental polymer chemist for the 3M company. My mother, Ellen Swedberg, was the sixth of eight children. Her upbringing was more severe. She was only five years old when her mother died; later her father lost their farm in Twin Brooks, South Dakota during the Depression. At age 18, Mother moved to St. Paul in order to support herself. Despite eleven years difference in age, Dad and Mom met at a Lutheran church social, fell in love, and married. I was never certain how much their families approved, since even small differences in geographical origins are taken very seriously by Scandinavians. The Agres were Norwegian (Osterdalen and Trondelag), while the Swedbergs had mixed origins - Swedish (Sk?ne) and Norwegian (Telemark).
Childhood
Following WWII, my parents moved to Northfield, a town 40 miles south of Minneapolis where Dad was recruited to the chemistry department at St. Olaf College. Dad was energetic and, with the help of his St. Olaf students during the summers, he built our house across the street from the college athletic fields and meadows. We could look up at the college from our living room. As was the tradition, Mom had babies and took care of the family. Preceded two years by my sister Annetta, I was born on January 30, 1949 and received the anglicized name of my grandfather, Peder. My closest sibling, James (Jim), was born one year later, followed by Paul, Ruth, and Mark. We had an idyllic childhood. Grandmother Agre lived nearby and coaxed us to speak rudimentary Norwegian in return for cookies and other bribes ("Jeg liker Bestemor's mat!"). Northfield was in many ways a new-world enclave of pre-Ibsen Norway with 19th century religious and socially conservative values. My friends had family names like Lunder, Finholt, Berglund, and Fredriksen. We schoolchildren all sat on the hillside waving our Norwegian flags when King Haakon visited St. Olaf. He was chauffeured from the train station to the college in the only Cadillac in town - owned by the local plumber. We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible. During the summers, he welcomed us into his laboratory at St. Olaf where he rigged simple "experiments" for us such as changing the color of solutions containing indicator dye by adding acid or base. As a youngster, it was obvious to me that I would follow my father's career path, since he was my greatest hero.
Courtland Agre in his lab at St. Olaf College.
Life changed for our family while I was in the third grade. Grandmother Agre died, and Dad decided to take a sabbatical year at the University of California. Dad had high aspirations, and through the American Chemical Society he became acquainted with renowned scientists. Berkeley was an amazing change from Northfield, and Jim and I attempted, with limited success, to demonstrate our Norwegian athletic and scholastic superiority to the smart and culturally heterogeneous Berkeley youngsters. It was at this time that my brother Paul was recognized as mentally retarded, and my sister Ruth began to exhibit her lifelong personality disorder with lack of impulse control. While they never fretted openly, these problems must have caused my parents profound heartache.
Following the year in Berkeley, we returned to Minnesota. Always eager for a challenge, Dad accepted a professorship at Augsburg College, a small Norwegian Lutheran college in Minneapolis with a chemistry department in need of help. We lived in a beautiful, large brick house on the banks of Lake Nokomis and went to the public schools. My inconsistent academic performance was usually well tolerated, as I tried to amuse my school classes with my practical jokes and amateurish wit. As in Northfield, my teachers were the kindest and nicest people imaginable. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a teacher in the life of a child, and my all-time favorite was my sixth grade teacher Richard Hughes whose kindly personality and gentle sense of humor inspired in us the idea that learning is wonderfully fun. This impression was shared by many. My classmate Julia Lofness remains a close personal friend and still cheers me by retelling events from our days in Mr. Hughes' class.
My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop. Scouting was a particularly important activity for us, and through the generous instruction of our Scoutmasters, Harold Neuendorf and Francis McMahon, we learned the resourcefulness needed to camp out even in Minnesota winters. One of our happiest times was in 1964 when Jim and I received our Eagle Scout Awards together - Dad carried that snapshot in his wallet for the rest of his life. Dad's presence was always palpable. Needing a medical doctor to perform physical examinations before summer camp, Dad always arranged for one of his former St. Olaf students to serve. One summer, Dr. Charles Mayo, grandson of the Mayo Clinic founder, examined the boys of Troop 185. Also as a Scout, I developed a deep interest in the culture of the Ojibway Indians of Northern Minnesota and explored the Canadian wilderness by canoe - an activity that I still undertake with family members each summer. In retrospect, another remarkable experience was the several-days visit to our home by Dad's friend Linus Pauling who presented lectures on physical chemistry (subject of his 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) and the dangers of nuclear arms (subject of his 1962 Nobel Peace Prize). In person, Pauling was jovial, confident, and more engaging than anyone we had ever met. Dad always raved that Pauling's accomplishments were the greatest, and he instilled in us his view that the Nobel Prize is the closest thing to the Holy Grail.
High school and college
My years at Theodore Roosevelt high school were notable for reasons other than academics. Like other adolescents, I developed a strong attraction to girls and discovered that my parents' ideas were not the least bit interesting. I earned money as a concession salesman at the Minnesota Twins and Vikings games. At this time I developed a lifelong love of cross country skiing and long distance bicycling with my close friend and classmate Tom Page, an aspiring artist and fellow adventurer. Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt. This permanently sparked great enthusiasm for international travel in me. After my return, I gravitated in a Bohemian direction. Fancying myself as some sort of Bolshevik, my senior year in high school went badly in terms of conforming with my family's expectations. Rebelling against the establishment, my friends and I self-published an underground newspaper, The Substandard - a parody of the Roosevelt High School Standard. Our foray into newspaper work caused much delight amongst everyone except the school administration. Facing dismissal, I withdrew from school in the winter of 1967 when my grade in chemistry had dropped to a "D." Nevertheless, I finished my high school degree in night school, and I studied Russian language at the University of Minnesota during the day. I worked the evening shift and drove a truck for a factory making dummy land mines and parts for military equipment destined for the war in Vietnam.
This experience in the real world was far less appealing than I had anticipated, but Dad's faculty position offered a logical solution. I swallowed my pride and enrolled at Augsburg where I majored in chemistry in preparation for a career in medicine. Living at home, my social life was restricted to bicycle rides along the Mississippi River and around the lakes. My closest friends Tom and Julia remained in Minnesota for college and were generous sources of support. My second year at Augsburg was enlivened when brother Jim and I organized and played for the varsity soccer team. I also worked part time delivering flowers for a local florist. Although I was not sympathetic to the Lutheran affiliation of the school, I developed my first real academic self-discipline at Augsburg. I greatly benefited from excellent faculty, especially John Holum, the organic chemistry professor, and from the warm and friendly personalities of the other chemistry majors. Unlike many campuses, Augsburg lacked an overly competitive pre-med atmosphere, and all eight of the premedical chemistry majors in the class of 1970 were accepted into medical school. My brothers Jim and Mark also attended Augsburg and went on to medical school. Annetta graduated from Augsburg before marrying and raising her family; her daughter Christina has also become a medical doctor.
In 1985, after a decade of systematic studies on water channels in human red blood cells (RBC) performed at “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Gheorghe Benga and coworkers discovered the presence and location of the first water channel protein in the human (RBC) membrane among polypeptides migrating in the region of 35-60 kDa on the electroforetogram of RBC membranes (Benga Gh,
Popescu O, Pop IV, Holmes R, Biochemistry, 25, 1535-1538, 1986). In this landmark publication Benga also indicated the way to further studies, by protein purification and reconstitution in lipid vesicles (liposomes). This work was extended (Benga Gh, Popescu O, Borza Victoria, Pop VI, Mure?an A, Mocsy I, Brain A, Wrigglesworth JM, Eur J Cell Biol 41: 252-262, 1986) and reviewed by Benga in several articles including a chapter in a book published in the USA (Benga Gh, (Ed) 1989. Water transport in biological membranes. CRC Press, Boca Raton).
In 1988, Peter Agre and coworkers (Denker BM, Smith BL, Kuhaida FP, Agre P, J. Biol. Chem. 1988, 263:15634-15642), while working on the rhesus blood group antigen at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, serendipitously isolated a new 28 kDa membrane protein from human red blood cells, called, CHIP28 (“channel forming integral membrane protein of 28 kDaltons); in addition to the 28 kDa component, this protein had a 35-60 kDa glycosylated component, the one detected in 1986 by the Benga’s group. Agre and coworkers suggested that “this new protein may play a role in linkage of the membrane skeleton to the lipid bilayer” (Smith BL, Agre P., J. Biol. Chem. 1991, 266:6407-6415).
Only in 1992, the Agre’s group suggested that “it is likely that CHIP28 is a functional unit of membrane water channels” (Preston G.M, Carroll TP, Guggino WB, Agre P, Science, 1992, 256:385-387). In this paper, they cited a paper of Benga and coworkers from 1983 (Benga Gh, Popescu O, Pop VI. 1983, Cell Biol Int Rep, 7: 807- 818), without mentioning their landmark 1986 papers or any of the reviews. In 1993 CHIP28 was renamed aquaporin 1 (the first water channel protein).
It is obvious and overwhelmingly documented from the facts presented above that the first water channel protein (aquaporin 1) was first discovered by the Romanian scientist Gheorghe Benga and his group in 1985 and reported in publications in 1986. They detected the glycosylated form of the protein (subsequently worked on by Agre’s group), which they correctly identified as playing the key role in water transport across RBC membrane.
In October 2003, Peter Agre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, “for the discovery of water channels”. An invited review of the history of the discovery of water channels proteins was published by Benga in September 2003, one month before the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded (Benga Gh, Cell Biol. Int. 2003, 27:701-709). The seminal contributions from 1986 of the Benga’s group, also mentioned in this review, were completely overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee.
After the announcement of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was released by Nobel Foundation Gheorghe Benga received a multitude of spontaneous messages (phone calls, E-mailed messages and faxed letters) from all over the world. The scientists who sent messages to Gheorghe Benga considered that in fact he discovered the first water channel protein in the red blood cell membranes (the protein later called aquaporin1) several years before Peter Agre and the chemical definition of this channel protein by Peter Agre has no more value than the first demonstration and labeling of the site in the red blood cell membrane where the water channel protein is located. As a result Gheorghe Benga wrote a PETITION, presented on October 18 th at the 6 th International
Symposium of Molecular Medicine (Hersonissos, Crete, Greece) that is now available at where a full background to the controversy can be seen.. The priority of Gheorghe Benga’s group in the discovery of the first water channel protein has been mentioned in comments on the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Bradley D. Spotlight,
IJ, Kuchel P., Medical Journal Australia, 179: 611-613, 2003; Rogerund K. Kemipriset v?llar ny Nobelstrid, Dagens Nyheter, 10 Decembrie 2003; Strid kring medicinpriset....och kring kemipriset, Sydsvenska Dagbladet, December 11, 2003; Nobel mystery. Newsletter of King’s College, January 2004). More than 2000 supporters form dozens of countries, including a Nobel Laureate, have signed at . By now, many academic institutions, faculties, universities, scientific organizations and associations, research institutes, have recognized Gheorghe Benga as a discoverer of the first water channel protein before Pete r Agre.Considering the facts presented above, we agree to recognize Gheorghe Benga as a discoverer of the first water channel protein a few years before Peter Agre (2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry).
Ancestral origins
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement. The Homestead Act offered new arrivals from other countries the opportunity to stake and develop farms of 160 acres by simply working the land for five years. Although they were only in their teens or early twenties, my great grandparents individually left their villages in Norway and Sweden between 1875 and 1885 and migrated to western Minnesota and South Dakota. Similar to the protagonists in the epics of Ole Rolvaag and Vilhelm Moberg, they worked the rich farmland, married, raised families, and achieved prosperity unattainable at that time in Scandinavia.
Things changed for my parents' generation. My father, Courtland Agre, and his two sisters grew up in Wallace, a hamlet in eastern South Dakota where his parents ran the general store. Wallace was also the hometown of Hubert Humphrey, and while my aunt Pearl remembers baby-sitting young Hubert, my father, an ardent Republican, claimed that they never met. To accommodate their educational needs, my grandparents moved the family to a larger town and ultimately to Minneapolis where Dad earned his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota. He contributed to the U.S. effort in World War II by working as an experimental polymer chemist for the 3M company. My mother, Ellen Swedberg, was the sixth of eight children. Her upbringing was more severe. She was only five years old when her mother died; later her father lost their farm in Twin Brooks, South Dakota during the Depression. At age 18, Mother moved to St. Paul in order to support herself. Despite eleven years difference in age, Dad and Mom met at a Lutheran church social, fell in love, and married. I was never certain how much their families approved, since even small differences in geographical origins are taken very seriously by Scandinavians. The Agres were Norwegian (Osterdalen and Trondelag), while the Swedbergs had mixed origins - Swedish (Sk?ne) and Norwegian (Telemark).
Childhood
Following WWII, my parents moved to Northfield, a town 40 miles south of Minneapolis where Dad was recruited to the chemistry department at St. Olaf College. Dad was energetic and, with the help of his St. Olaf students during the summers, he built our house across the street from the college athletic fields and meadows. We could look up at the college from our living room. As was the tradition, Mom had babies and took care of the family. Preceded two years by my sister Annetta, I was born on January 30, 1949 and received the anglicized name of my grandfather, Peder. My closest sibling, James (Jim), was born one year later, followed by Paul, Ruth, and Mark. We had an idyllic childhood. Grandmother Agre lived nearby and coaxed us to speak rudimentary Norwegian in return for cookies and other bribes ("Jeg liker Bestemor's mat!"). Northfield was in many ways a new-world enclave of pre-Ibsen Norway with 19th century religious and socially conservative values. My friends had family names like Lunder, Finholt, Berglund, and Fredriksen. We schoolchildren all sat on the hillside waving our Norwegian flags when King Haakon visited St. Olaf. He was chauffeured from the train station to the college in the only Cadillac in town - owned by the local plumber. We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible. During the summers, he welcomed us into his laboratory at St. Olaf where he rigged simple "experiments" for us such as changing the color of solutions containing indicator dye by adding acid or base. As a youngster, it was obvious to me that I would follow my father's career path, since he was my greatest hero.
Courtland Agre in his lab at St. Olaf College.
Life changed for our family while I was in the third grade. Grandmother Agre died, and Dad decided to take a sabbatical year at the University of California. Dad had high aspirations, and through the American Chemical Society he became acquainted with renowned scientists. Berkeley was an amazing change from Northfield, and Jim and I attempted, with limited success, to demonstrate our Norwegian athletic and scholastic superiority to the smart and culturally heterogeneous Berkeley youngsters. It was at this time that my brother Paul was recognized as mentally retarded, and my sister Ruth began to exhibit her lifelong personality disorder with lack of impulse control. While they never fretted openly, these problems must have caused my parents profound heartache.
Following the year in Berkeley, we returned to Minnesota. Always eager for a challenge, Dad accepted a professorship at Augsburg College, a small Norwegian Lutheran college in Minneapolis with a chemistry department in need of help. We lived in a beautiful, large brick house on the banks of Lake Nokomis and went to the public schools. My inconsistent academic performance was usually well tolerated, as I tried to amuse my school classes with my practical jokes and amateurish wit. As in Northfield, my teachers were the kindest and nicest people imaginable. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a teacher in the life of a child, and my all-time favorite was my sixth grade teacher Richard Hughes whose kindly personality and gentle sense of humor inspired in us the idea that learning is wonderfully fun. This impression was shared by many. My classmate Julia Lofness remains a close personal friend and still cheers me by retelling events from our days in Mr. Hughes' class.
My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop. Scouting was a particularly important activity for us, and through the generous instruction of our Scoutmasters, Harold Neuendorf and Francis McMahon, we learned the resourcefulness needed to camp out even in Minnesota winters. One of our happiest times was in 1964 when Jim and I received our Eagle Scout Awards together - Dad carried that snapshot in his wallet for the rest of his life. Dad's presence was always palpable. Needing a medical doctor to perform physical examinations before summer camp, Dad always arranged for one of his former St. Olaf students to serve. One summer, Dr. Charles Mayo, grandson of the Mayo Clinic founder, examined the boys of Troop 185. Also as a Scout, I developed a deep interest in the culture of the Ojibway Indians of Northern Minnesota and explored the Canadian wilderness by canoe - an activity that I still undertake with family members each summer. In retrospect, another remarkable experience was the several-days visit to our home by Dad's friend Linus Pauling who presented lectures on physical chemistry (subject of his 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) and the dangers of nuclear arms (subject of his 1962 Nobel Peace Prize). In person, Pauling was jovial, confident, and more engaging than anyone we had ever met. Dad always raved that Pauling's accomplishments were the greatest, and he instilled in us his view that the Nobel Prize is the closest thing to the Holy Grail.
High school and college
My years at Theodore Roosevelt high school were notable for reasons other than academics. Like other adolescents, I developed a strong attraction to girls and discovered that my parents' ideas were not the least bit interesting. I earned money as a concession salesman at the Minnesota Twins and Vikings games. At this time I developed a lifelong love of cross country skiing and long distance bicycling with my close friend and classmate Tom Page, an aspiring artist and fellow adventurer. Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt. This permanently sparked great enthusiasm for international travel in me. After my return, I gravitated in a Bohemian direction. Fancying myself as some sort of Bolshevik, my senior year in high school went badly in terms of conforming with my family's expectations. Rebelling against the establishment, my friends and I self-published an underground newspaper, The Substandard - a parody of the Roosevelt High School Standard. Our foray into newspaper work caused much delight amongst everyone except the school administration. Facing dismissal, I withdrew from school in the winter of 1967 when my grade in chemistry had dropped to a "D." Nevertheless, I finished my high school degree in night school, and I studied Russian language at the University of Minnesota during the day. I worked the evening shift and drove a truck for a factory making dummy land mines and parts for military equipment destined for the war in Vietnam.
This experience in the real world was far less appealing than I had anticipated, but Dad's faculty position offered a logical solution. I swallowed my pride and enrolled at Augsburg where I majored in chemistry in preparation for a career in medicine. Living at home, my social life was restricted to bicycle rides along the Mississippi River and around the lakes. My closest friends Tom and Julia remained in Minnesota for college and were generous sources of support. My second year at Augsburg was enlivened when brother Jim and I organized and played for the varsity soccer team. I also worked part time delivering flowers for a local florist. Although I was not sympathetic to the Lutheran affiliation of the school, I developed my first real academic self-discipline at Augsburg. I greatly benefited from excellent faculty, especially John Holum, the organic chemistry professor, and from the warm and friendly personalities of the other chemistry majors. Unlike many campuses, Augsburg lacked an overly competitive pre-med atmosphere, and all eight of the premedical chemistry majors in the class of 1970 were accepted into medical school. My brothers Jim and Mark also attended Augsburg and went on to medical school. Annetta graduated from Augsburg before marrying and raising her family; her daughter Christina has also become a medical doctor.
I suppose there were some early indications of my tendency to a life of curiosity. Apparently from a very young age I had a habit of asking lots of questions: 'what would happen if.?' was a favorite. And I liked having facts straight and knowing how things work and did not hesitate to give explanations to those around me, apparently to an annoying degree sometimes. I remember one day my father, at the end of his patience, commenting that I was a 'compendium of useless information'. I certainly can understand his plight with one of the seven having way too many questions and answers all the time. On the positive side, I learned a new word that day when I looked up compendium in the dictionary.
There were probably even indications that my curiosity might be scientific. Burlington Massachusetts was rural when I was young and I loved to roam and explore. I had rock collections and read children's books on geology and the history of the earth. I made little volcanoes out of plaster of paris and added baking soda and vinegar to the craters to simulate volcanic eruptions. I had an accident one day that made my mother laugh to my utter frustration: at that young age I failed to appreciate the humor in a little boy telling his mother he had dropped a volcano on his toe! In the summer I collected butterflies, turtles, snakes and other living things. One summer my mother enrolled me in a science enrichment class for elementary school students and I was allowed to take home a microscope. I used it to look at everything I could find: microorganisms from the nearby pond, leaves and blades of grass. I spent hour after hour alone, mesmerized by the tiny little things that I could see.
My scientific curiosity took a back seat to athletics through junior high and high school. Gymnastics was a good match to my small build and to my solitary nature. I was a member of a team but gymnastics is an individual sport. You learn a technique, then a 'move', and then a 'routine'. And then you perfect it through practice, working mostly alone. I had a very good no nonsense teacher, coach Hayes, who really instilled in me the idea of perfection through practice. I was actually not all that bad, particularly at floor exercise and high bar. I even considered pursuing gymnastics in college, but during my final year of high school I began to wonder what I should pursue for a career.
I attended the University of Massachusetts in Boston for one year and then transferred to Brandeis University. Brandeis was an eye opening experience for me. For the first time in my life I was in a seriously intellectual environment. The classes tended to be small, intense, and stimulating. I discovered that I had a passion for science, and that I was very good at it. I chose Biochemistry as a major and a newly arrived assistant professor named Chris Miller for my honors thesis advisor. He had a little laboratory with big windows and lots of light shining in. I studied calcium transport and learned about the cell membrane as an electrode. I could see that Chris Miller was a man having lots of fun in his daily life and it was inspiring to me, and the memory of this stayed with me. But the biggest influence Brandeis had on my life happened in Physics class. There I met my future wife Alice Lee, whose sparkling eyes and sharp mind caught my attention.
Against Chris Miller's advice I went to medical school after Brandeis. I studied at Tufts University School of Medicine and then at Beth Israel Hospital Boston for house officer training in Internal Medicine. I learned a lot but in the end I should have taken Chris' advice to pursue science. Medicine required a lot of memorization and little analytical problem solving. To keep a certain part of my brain active I began to study mathematics, and continue this even today, learning new methods and solving problems with the same disciplined approach I had learned in gymnastics. I started back to science near the end of house officer training working with Jim Morgan studying calcium in cardiac muscle contractility, which was very enjoyable and kept me connected to medicine. But I had a yearning to work on a very basic science problem, which meant I would have to break my medical ties. This was a difficult decision because I had invested so many years in medical education; to abandon it was to admit to myself that I had misspent a big piece of my life. And there were practical considerations as well. It was time finally to get a permanent job; after all, my wife Alice had supported me through years of training. Not to mention I was nearly 30 years old with no real basic science training beyond my Brandeis undergraduate education: would I even be able to make it as a scientist?
Alice Lee in 1986 at the time of my decision to leave medicine for science.
Two factors had the greatest influence on my decision. Back in my first year of medical school I lost my sister Elley, an artist only two years my senior. Diagnosed with leukemia during my hematology clerkship as I learned about the dreaded disease, she lasted only two months. This horrifying event impressed upon me how fragile and precious life is, and how important it is to seize the moment and enjoy what you do while you can. I remember thinking when I look back upon my life at the age of seventy, thirty will seem young: just go for it. And the second factor was Alice. She had complete faith in my ability to succeed. Never mind that postdoctoral studies meant a reduction of my already piddling house officer salary. She simply said you have no choice; we will manage somehow.
Memories of Chris Miller's laboratory beckoned so I returned for postdoctoral studies. Of course I will never out live his reminding me that I should have listened to him in the first place. Feeling far behind in my knowledge I approached my postdoctoral studies with intensity, learning techniques and theory. I felt I should be an expert in electrochemistry, stochastic processes, linear systems theory, and many more subjects. I read books, solved the problem sets, mastered the subjects, and carried out experiments. I had the very good fortune of a coworker Jacques Neyton, a postdoctoral scientist from France. Jacques is a very critical thinker who would brood on a problem. We exchanged ideas often. When I would tell him one of my ideas he had a tendency just to listen quietly. Then, after a while, if his response started with 'Hey Roddy, there's something I don't understand' I knew I was in trouble - my idea was probably no good!
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