Biophysical Society Newsletter - November 2015

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2015

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

NOVEMBER

Biophysicist in Profile RICHARD LYMN

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY

Officers President Edward Egelman President-Elect Suzanne Scarlata Past-President Dorothy Beckett Secretary Frances Separovic Treasurer Paul Axelsen Council Olga Boudker Ruth Heidelberger Kalina Hristova Juliette Lecomte Amy Lee Robert Nakamoto Gabriela Popescu Joseph D. Puglisi Michael Pusch Erin Sheets Antoine van Oijen Bonnie Wallace Biophysical Journal Leslie Loew Editor-in-Chief

Richard Lymn , creator of the muscle biology program at the National In- stitutes of Health (NIH) that funds major research at hospitals and uni- versities, grew up in Queens County, New York City. It was a largely blue collar area, and Lymn was able to interact and work with skilled craftsmen, including his father, who was a master plumber. “It was rewarding and a pleasure to work with master craftsmen and ask them questions about how devices worked and why repairs were done in a particular way,” Lymn says. “This was very good training in analysis of cause and effect. I learned some patience and new approaches when efforts did not proceed as expected.” The unusual neighborhood attracted many great teachers to its schools. Most had a lot of experience, and several held PhDs. Lymn remembers a crucial point in his education at Marie Curie Junior High School, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 , the first artificial Earth satellite. “The exploration of space became a great topic of conversation in school,” he recalls. “Students also had lively discussions about the crystal structures of myoglobin and hemoglobin and possible codes for genetic information. I was better in science and math at that time than in literary composition and responded with wonder at scientific advances.” Science scholarships had become much more common by the late 1950s, when Lymn was in junior high and high school. “Colleges were trying to reach out to groups of people who had not been in their traditional co- horts,” he says. “Schools like Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and Stanford expanded the field of choices when selecting entering fresh- men. I began expecting more as I approached high school graduation.” He had taken advanced courses in physics, chemistry, and math in high school, and looked forward to pursuing a career in science. He was excited to attend John Hopkins University when he received a scholarship from the school. “I decided to pursue studies in biophysics because the most interesting questions I could think of in science were related to biology and biological function.” Two of Lymn’s professors at Hopkins, F rancis “Spike” Carlson and William Harrington , recommended programs that he should look into for graduate school, and Lymn chose the biophysics program at the University of Chicago. There, at the beginning of his work in Ed Taylor’s laboratory, Lymn was trained by Birdwell Findlayson , a board-certified urologist whose goal was study- ing the kinetics of kidney stone formation. “He was acquiring a PhD in biophysics while practicing as a surgeon and developing some of the prototypic fast kinetics machinery that I ended up using and improving,” Lymn says. Lymn’s PhD thesis on motile systems came together well. “The findings of the thesis appeared as three papers published in Biochemistry ,” he says. A fourth paper described the chemical-quench rapid flow machine he invented to collect crucial new data. “The papers contained the data and

Society Office Ro Kampman Executive Officer Newsletter Catie Curry Beth Staehle Ray Wolfe Production Laura Phelan Profile Ellen Weiss Public Affairs Beth Staehle Publisher's Forum

The Biophysical Society Newsletter (ISSN 0006-3495) is published twelve times per year, January- December, by the Biophysical Society, 11400 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, Maryland 20852. Distributed to USA members and other countries at no cost. Canadian GST No. 898477062. Postmaster: Send address changes to Biophysical Society, 11400 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, MD 20852. Copyright © 2015 by the Biophysical Society. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

"Myosin, Microtubules, and Motion" symposium, organized by Lymn in 1999.