The
Marian E. Koshland Memorial Lecture Series
The Marian E. Koshland Memorial Lectures,
continuing the tradition of the "Merck" series, is organized and
hosted by MCB graduate students. Funded by generous contributions made to
the department in memory of Professor Marian E. Koshland, the mission of the
series is to bring high-profile speakers to UC Berkeley, and let graduate
students monopolize their time while they are here! Students have the
opportunity to host speakers, dine with them, and socialize with them at
receptions before and after the lecture. All this makes the Marian E.
Koshland lecture series a unique event in the MCB department.
(Dr.
Koshland with her husband, Dr. Daniel Koshland, Jr.)
Professor
Marian E. Koshland
Born
in New Haven, Connecticut, Dr. Koshland earned her B.A. in bacteriology from
Vassar College in 1942 and an M.S. and Ph.D.in immunology from the University
of Chicago in 1943 and 1949 respectively. While working on her Ph.D., Dr.
Koshland had the opportunity to work on two defense-related projects: helping
develop a vaccine against cholera for the troops, and working as a chemist on
the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. From 1949 to 1951 Dr. Koshland
held a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. She joined the
Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York in 1952 where she was a
bacteriologist and immunologist.
In 1965 Dr. Koshland joined the University of California, Berkeley as associate
research immunologist in the virus laboratory. She was named a professor of the
department of Microbiology & Immunology in 1970, and served as Chair of the
department from 1982-89. At the time of her death in 1997, she was head of the
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology's Graduate Affairs Division.
Among Dr. Koshland's many contributions to the scientific world was her
discovery of the variations in the amino acid composition of antibodies that
explained how they recognize invading organisms or other foreign material in
the body.
Dr. Koshland was an active member in many professional societies: the National
Academy of Sciences, the National Science Board, the National Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and the American Society of Biological Chemists to name a few.
She was past president of the American Association of Immunologists and a
member of the Council of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National
Institutes of Health. Dr. Koshland also published extensively, contributing 200
articles to scientific publications and serving on the editorial boards of the
Annual Review of Cell Biology, Journal of Immunology, Biochemistry and
Immunochemistry.