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Irving Zucker was born in New York City, in an area called the Bronx. He went to public schools all the way through high school. When he was young he always liked science and biology. Questions would pop into his mind such as, “How did I move my arm?” or “How does my heart know to beat faster when I am running?” These questions, plus having people in his family who were doctors, made him sure that he wanted to study science and maybe medicine.

New York is the Only Place to Live
Being from New York, Irv didn’t even think about leaving the city to go some place else for college. He chose to go to New York University where he could get a good all-around education. The problem was that New York University cost a lot of money. So after the first year Irv switched to The City College of New York, which was still a good college but it didn’t cost him to go there at that time (1961).

Choosing What to Study
While he was in college, Irv thought that he should study medicine. He had an uncle who was a doctor and that made Irv think that was what he wanted to do. On the other hand, Irv knew that he was the kind of person who would not be good at dealing with sick people. He also did not want to have to be at the hospital for many hours or days at a time. He did not think he would like dealing with sickness where so much is not known and he would not always be able to solve the problems of sickness.

At that time physiology was the base for medicine. Irv decided that he would need to do experiments to find out the answers for many of the questions he had. To really understand the physiology of what happens to the body, he would need to use the scientific method and design experiments, do them, and then figure out what the results meant. Doing experiments to test why something happens was much more interesting to Irv than becoming a doctor. Of all the fields in biology, physiology was the way he saw to get the answers to his questions.

Learning All About Physiology
Irv’s career path was straight forward. After he finished college, he went to the Department of Physiology at New York Medical College to learn how to do research and get his Ph.D. degree. There he worked for Dr. Gabor Kaley, who is still the Chair of that department today.

Irv did research on how the body controls how sodium is gotten rid of and how that relates to whether cells swell or shrink. This was a good choice of projects to work on because it made him learn about lots of different areas of physiology. He had to learn about the kidneys, nerves and brain, and heart and blood vessels.

As he was doing research, Irv got interested in how the heart and blood vessels “sensed” blood pressure and how much blood there was. To find out the answers to these questions, Irv had to learn new ways of doing experiments. While he was learning these new ways, he met Dr. Joseph P. Gilmore, a teacher at the University of Virginia who helped him. Just as Irv was finishing his Ph.D. degree, Dr. Gilmore moved to Nebraska and became Chair of the department at the University of Nebraska.

A Short Stay in Nebraska . . .
After Dr. Zucker finished his Ph.D. degree, he decided to get some extra training in Dr. Gilmore’s laboratory. It would only be for 2 years, and Dr. Zucker and his wife decided that 2 years in Omaha would not be so bad. So they packed up everything they owned in their 1968 Volvo and headed across the country.

During these 2 years, Dr. Zucker got a lot of research done and both he and his wife liked being in Nebraska. Being in Dr. Gilmore’s lab let Dr. Zucker do important experiments to understand how the nerve endings that sense swelling or shrinking worked in healthy compared with sick animals. He was also able to teach and work with students that were studying to be doctors, dentists, or nurses.

. . . Turns into a Life
As luck would have it, as the 2 years was almost up, Dr. Zucker was asked to stay and become a teacher in the department. Because they had liked being in Nebraska, Dr. Zucker and his wife decided to stay. The rest is history. Dr. Zucker kept being promoted over the years. Then in 1989, Dr. Gilmore decided to retire and Dr. Zucker was asked to become the Chair of the department. He has been Chair ever since then.

Research on Nerves and Disease
Dr. Zucker runs a laboratory that usually has about seven people working in it. These people are all at different stages of their careers. The research they do is to try and understand what controls the nerves that are involved in diseases like heart failure, high blood pressure, and diabetes. They want to understand what chemicals or other things in the brain make the nerves act different when someone has one of these diseases.

Being Chair
As Chair, Dr. Zucker also has to work with office staff and deal with money for the whole department (over $4 million). He has to make sure that the classes they teach in the department are up to the standards of the state of Nebraska and the medical school. He also tries to be a good leader to the 12 teachers in the department and help them be better teachers and researchers.
Being Chair is a lot of work, since Dr. Zucker is also doing his own teaching and research. He finds doing it all, the best he can, is very rewarding.

Other Jobs
Dr. Zucker also has worked for many years without pay for other groups, like The American Physiological Society (APS), the American Heart Association, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Association of Chairs of Departments of Physiology (ACDP). He has been asked to be on many different committees for APS. This past year, he was elected by all the members of APS to be on the Council and help run the Society. He was also elected to the Council of the ACDP and in 2003 he was elected to be their President.

Seeing the World
Dr. Zucker has really liked the career he chose and not just because he gets to do experiments. He has gotten to travel and see many different parts of the world and meet lots of great people. Being able to work and talk to other people doing the same kinds of research has been a big help in his own research.

Away From the Lab
Besides research, Dr. Zucker loves music, good food, and being with friends. He loves to cook, which for a scientist is very much like being in the lab. He also loves going to the theater and seeing plays.

Of course, having a great family makes him happy and keeps him going, no matter where he is, at work or at home. When his children were younger and in elementary and high school, he loved to go to their schools and talk about what it was like to be a scientist and do research.