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Living History of Physiology
F. Eugene Yates
 My
54 Years as a Physiologist
Having enjoyed autobiographical reports from the many
very durable scientists you have been publishing in The Physiologist,
I am delighted to get my turn, after I celebrated my 80th
birthday last week. Your invitation and questions naturally evoked memories
and reflections on the shape of my whole career, so I begin with a sketch of
its six epochs, before presuming to offer fragments of ( as you put it)
“wisdom to pass on to (my) younger colleagues”. I composed this reply, in
outline, as I was skiing on a blue sky day, in good snow, at Park City
Mountain Resort in Utah. As a result, my endorphins are high as I write.
While I was overseas serving as a Navy doctor during
the Korean War, I had much time to think about the next step of my career
when I got out of the service. I knew I wanted more scientific education, so
I applied (by brief telegrams!) to Gene Landis, head of the Harvard
Physiology Department, and to Arnold Rich in Pathology at Hopkins, seeking a
post-doctoral fellowship. After a few weeks I received a telegram from
Harvard accepting me, with details to follow in a letter. I accepted via
return telegram immediately. (The very next day I received an acceptance
from Hopkins, and had these responses reached me in reverse order I would
have had a very different professional life!)
I have been a member of The American Physiological
Society for over 50 years, and my best contribution to APS was to invent,
and launch the section journal AJP: Regulatory, Integrative and
Comparative. I was its first Editor in Chief, and introduced three
special sections: Letters, Invited Opinions, and Modeling Methodology Forum
(that included a home for formal statistics). I also founded the Annals
of Biomedical Engineering for the BME Society, edited it for seven
years, and became the third President of the Society. I also founded
Endocrine Reviews for the Endocrine Society. All three journals are
currently thriving.
The “epochs” of my career, in sequence, unfolded as
seven years in the Physiology Department at Harvard, ten years in the
Physiology Department at Stanford (where I ultimately became Executive), ten
years in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Southern
California ( where I served as Director of an NIH -sponsored Medical
Engineering Center), and 23 years at UCLA, (where for the initial seven of
those years I was the first Director of the Crump Institute for Medical
Engineering, the Ralph and Marjorie Crump Professor of Medical Engineering
and also Professor of Chemical Engineering ), and for all 23 years also
Professor of Medicine. From 1970 to 1997 I was a Consulting Principal
Scientist to the ALZA Corporation, working on designs and clinical trials
for novel, controlled delivery systems for therapeutic drugs, and for the
past seven years I have been a member of the External Advisory Council of
the NASA-affiliated National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston.
I retired from academic life in 2003. I am currently
active as a Science Advisor to the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s
Foundation, with an office in their headquarters (email:
gyates@jdfaf.org), and am continuing as a member of the External
Advisory Council of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute/NASA,
that is preparing medical support for the many and varied risk factors
associated with astronauts in long-duration space flights, away from a
near-earth orbit.
Traveling along my unguided career path – a seemingly
random walk – I encountered and benefited from the experience and wisdom of
many scientists, including: Cliff Barger (skills in gentle handling of
chronic preparations in animals who remained unstressed), John Pappenheimer
(introduction to transport phenomena), Bob Brennan (computer simulation of
engineering control systems), Tom Sebeok (signs, symbols and significance),
Arthur Iberall (a new physics for complex systems), Phil Anderson (needed
balance between reductionism (analysis) and holism (synthesis) for many
comprehensive descriptions in sciences, and showing that they are not
technical inverses), Howard Pattee (information versus dynamics in biology),
Bob Rosen (a mathematics for complexity), Alex Zaffaroni ( adding control to
chemistry in pharmaceutical science), Walter Bortz (showing me that good
medical science can be an effective basis for sensible public health
policies), and Larry Young (countermeasures against risk factors for
long-duration, human space flights). I owe them all (and many others
–including students and post-docs) profound thanks for the joy and passion
their insights have added to my professional life.
My current research focuses on three themes: 1)
theories of senescence (why do we grow old and die?); 2) reinterpretation of
subjective neo-Darwinian natural selection as objective dynamic filtering
-in evolution, senescence and extinctions; 3) extension of Cannon’s concept
of homeostasis (the core theory of physiologists) as a new, physical
stability and control theory for biology, that I call homeodynamics. I
am actively publishing and presenting my work in each area.
As for advice for young scientists, I yield to the
classic books by Ramón y Cajal, Peter Medawar and Walter Cannon. I can add
only that I notice certain common temperaments among my favorite colleagues
in science: all have deep respect for rules of evidence, humility in the
face of what they don’t (yet) understand, courtesy toward colleagues and
openness in discussions of their own past and present work. (That latter
feature can be very difficult to sustain in a commercial world where
non-scientific requirements for secrecy intrude.) I also notice that some
colleagues are “splitters” (reductionistic analysis is their style) while
others are “lumpers” who want the big picture with all its complexities and
mysteries. They like synthesis. A few try to adopt both styles – at the risk
of being, or being thought to be, dilettantes. My modest advice to young
scientists is merely: Do what you want to do, and do it now, with
whatever scientific style fits most happily.
Finally, though it may not be generalizable, I have
found that a durable marriage (57 years and counting) with a person you
like, admire and have much in common with (in my senior year of medical
school I married one of my classmates – who happened to be the daughter of
one of our faculty “greats” in internal medicine) greatly enhances the
professional journey by providing a secure and emotionally fulfilling base.
Our five children and eight grandchildren add a guarantee that I shall die a
happy man.
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