Senior Physiologists' News
Maurice L Kelley, Jr. writes: “A belated thank you for your note regarding my 80th birthday on June 29, 2004. I am pleased to report that I am doing well and continue to participate in the operations of the Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory here at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. It has been an honor and a privilege for me to have been a member of the American Physiology Society. Thank you once again for your interest. With best wishes and regards.”
Hiroshi Kita writes: “Thank you for your letter recommending me to report what I am doing now. I have to apologize for a long interval between your letter and my reply. One of the reasons for the delay is my feeling of hesitation in writing a letter in this section among many distinguished physiologists.
“At the time of my retirement in March, 2003, I stopped my laboratory work on the mechanism for neurotransmitter release on cricket neuromuscular junctions in which we had been interested for about ten years.
“In Japan, we usually cannot keep a laboratory for research after a retirement age, which is determined by the regulation of each university or institution, so as to make space for a successor. It is also difficult for retired faculty members to get research grants, because there are many excellent young researchers seeking grants. Therefore, only work left to me is to complete papers on cricket neuromuscular junctions.
“During 1968 to 1976, I collaborated with Bill Van der Kloot and Ira S. Cohen at NYU and then SUNY at Stony Brook to work on the mechanism of the release of neurotransmitter mostly at frog neuromuscular junctions. Thanks to their warm friendship, my wife and I could spend happy days in Manhattan and Stony Brook where our only daughter was born. Their friendliness is a treasure in my life and I feel like the U.S. is my second native land.
“I think everyone wants to leave a proof or trace that shows he or she lived on this earth. Biologically we can leave it by producing offsprings. But we further wish to leave a cultural, or civilized one that is, I think, more valuable. Fortunately we, physiologists, can do it by publishing papers in international journals, which are preserved forever as cultural human products in the libraries of universities and institutions all over the world. University people often say that sooner or later positions disappear and only papers go down to coming ages. Following the above-mentioned thought, we tried to send papers to first-class journals and some of them were published in such journals as Journal of Physiology, Journal of Neurophysiology, Nature and so on. In this respect, I feel a kind of self-satisfaction, although people think differently and have different views of value.
“My current plan is to study the history of physiology, especially neurophysiology, and the achievements of Leonardo da Vinci as a physiologist. I continue teaching physiology at a university of medical welfare and an institute of medical professions two or three times a week, depending on the semester as a part-time faculty member. To learn physiology with young people gives me a pleasure of life.”
Paul Hill writes: “Thank you for your letter. I apologize for the delay in replying but having recently broken my ankle I have not been able to get to my computer easily until now.
“Apart from the fracture, I’m keeping fit and well. I took early retirement from the Department of Physiology of the University of Auckland here in New Zealand about 10 years ago after 10 years as its head. My wife and I came down here to the centre of the North Island where we have a 10-acre property. Looking after this has kept me busy and active.
“I took up clinical practice again working part time in the casualty department of the small local hospital. That was a fairly steep learning curve! But I found the return to medicine rewarding.
“Until 2001 I also kept busy as the Executive Director of the body set up to plan and run the 34th IUPS meeting in Christchurch in 2001. The most enjoyable part of that meeting for me was my involvement with young investigators. We were able to fully fund a substantial number from all over the world who would otherwise not have been able to attend the meeting. They were a delightful and lively group.
“Currently, I am no longer involved in physiological activities but still enjoy keeping in touch through the APS.”
Abba Kastin writes: “I appreciate your invitation to discuss my life. Although you didn’t ask me to do it while standing on one leg, I can condense the years into one page (in three brief sections).
“In the professional part of my life, I have introduced several concepts in the peptide field. This section can be summarized by copying the printed citation that accompanied the last award I received:
‘Abba Kastin was born in Ohio and educated at Harvard College and then Harvard Medical School. After starting his work on neuropeptides at NIH, he moved to Louisiana where he still resides. Dr. Kastin is an honorary member of seven medical societies outside of the United States, has received two honorary doctorates (1 USA and 1 foreign), and has won national and international awards. Author of over 800 papers, he has been listed among the 100 researchers most cited in the scientific literature (now almost 23,000 citations). He is Editor-in-Chief of Peptides: an International Journal and President of The International Neuropeptide Society. Dr. Kastin is honored for his numerous contributions in neuropeptide research.’
“My other interests, the second section, have changed little over the years: As I’ve done since grade school, I continue to swim and play the viola. I also collect Melanesian art, most of it located in my home in New Orleans overlooking the lake, with several pieces at the New Orleans Museum of Art. I currently serve on the advisory board of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and Visual Arts Visiting Committee of Loyola University.
“The third and most exciting section for me involves my recent move. Beginning August 1, 2004, I accepted an Endowed Chair at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge where I live in this ideal environment during the week. Our lab is located in a new building with a 5-story glass atrium resembling that of a Hyatt hotel. We overlook a lake and a couple hundred acres with many trees. The staff not only try to be most helpful, but they have the ability to do so. I’m in the first year of one of my R01 NIH grants (1.8 percentile score), so I hope to continue my research on peptides and the blood-brain barrier for as long as possible. I’m very grateful for the good fortune that has enabled me to enjoy life so much and wish the same to all of you.”
Hartmut Kirchheim writes: “Since during and after the christmas season I was pretty much involved with family reunions, my answer to your greetings for my 70th birthday is very late but my thanks are not less warm. Please transmit my thanks to the Senior Physiologists Committee.
“Since I am an old friend of Ulla and Jerry DiBona and have been visiting the University of Iowa several times, I looked at the homepage of the University and at your photograph, but I am not sure,whether we ever met at any of these occasions?
“Depending on the position held, some professors are allowed to stay until they are 68 years old, my retirement occurred as usual in Germany exactly after my 65th birthday with the year of 2000. The “Rektor” of the University of Heidelberg asked me to go on serving as his “Prorektor” (pro-vice chancellor for Medicine), but the ministry of education of Baden-Württemberg decided that there should be no exemption to the rule, so they considered with over 65 years I was too old for that job. So, to be honest, I told my American friends and colleagues that I have been retired.
“At first I considered, to follow the invitation of several American colleagues to come to the States for some time for research activities and tutoring students, but unfortunately my family situation did not allow this: My wife, who suffers from a late form (primary chronic progressive) of multiple sclerosis since 1990 increasingly needs help and above that has stronger family bonds (a 91-year-old mother) than I
have, so we decided to stay in Heidelberg.
“Beside learning household skills now (‘old dogs can learn new tricks’), I
did go on publishing until 2003. As a member of the editorial board of AJP (Int.&Comp. Physiology) I am still busy as a reviewer for this and occasionally for several other European Journals. Above that I am busy in the editorial board of a multidisciplinary research magazine (Ruperto-Carola) of the University of Heidelberg. Furthermore it is fun to keep intensive contacts to my former students in Germany and many friends in the United States.
“Since I lost my major hobby (work in a laboratory) I have more time now to play basketball in a senior sports group and participate in the University seminar activities especially in fields outside of physiology.
“With warm regards and many thanks for your greetings.”
Gerhard Malnic writes: “Thank you for your invitation to write about my life at the opportunity of reaching the age of 70, which I did in September 2003. I am answering your kind letter only now stimulated by reading the section on ‘Senior Physiologists’ News ‘in The Physiologist. Here in Brazil, reaching 70 leads to mandatory retirement, but my Department invited me to continue working in my laboratory, which I was very happy to do. The Brazilian Senate has passed recently a law to allow people in the Universities to retire only at 75, which still has to be approved by Congress (equivalent to the American House of Representatives), which however will not reach me. But it is also very good to go on with laboratory work without worrying about teaching and administration. I still have two graduate students working for their PhD, which should finish their work this year (2005). Then there are a few younger colleagues with their students in our group, which creates an attractive environment. It is also stimulating to be able to follow the work of my younger daughter, Bettina, who works in Biochemistry at our University, and is struggling to establish herself as a good scientist. Although she has to cope with a lot of competition, I believe that the life of a scientist these days is easier than during the days when I started a lab, since support for Science has improved a lot since then in Brazil, particularly in the State of Sao Paulo, where we have an efficient supporting agency. Bettina did her post-doc training with Linda Buck at Harvard, last year’s Nobelist in Physiology, and was invited by her to come to the ceremony in Stockholm, obviously a very exciting occasion.
“I am working presently in two areas, one of them renal “in vivo” micropuncture and microperfusion to investigate mechanisms of potassium and hydrogen excretion, an area which I started during my post-doc in the early sixties of last century (!) with Gerhard Giebisch at Cornell in New York and later at Yale. This collaboration is going on, and last year I spent some time at Yale to study potassium excretion in Romk (a potassium channel) knock-out mice, which was possible due to my experience in “in vivo” studies, which not so many Physiologsts are doing today, as very well analysed by Allen Cowley in the present issue of The Physiologist. The other area concerns studies on intracellular pH regulation in cells in culture, using fluorescence microscopy, which we have installed in the last years in our lab, with my long-time collaborator Margarida de Mello-Aires. So, as long as health permits, I plan to still have a few years of productive work, passing along some of my experience to a younger generation. At the same time, enjoying life with my wife Margit and our dog, we spend some time at our little beach cottage near Sao Paulo, especially when my older daughter Beatriz, a fine music teacher and performer, who lives in southern Florida, visits us with her two daughters, our grandchildren.”
Letter to Martin Frank
Paola S. Timiras writes: “It gives me great pleasure to communicate to my fellow Senior Physiologists some events concerning physiology at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and some of my own activities. First, some bad news: the Department of Physiology, founded around 1900 by Jacques Loeb and then extended to include Anatomy, was disestablished in 1989 and the members of the department were incorporated in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (as was my case) or that of Integrative Biology. The one-year course of Mammalian and Human Physiology that Dr Walter J. Freeman and I had taught for many years was cancelled. The good news is that, after my official retirement in 1994, I was “recalled” to continue teaching my two other courses, Physiology of Human Development and Physiology of the Aging Process, which remain popular to this day.
“UCB offers an unique challenge to research and training in physiology. It provides the opportunity to integrate various areas of biology currently flourishing on our campus - from cell and molecular biology to public health - without the strictures, but also unfortunately without the eventual support, of a medical school curriculum. This integrative role is well rooted in physiological tradition but it is often difficult to achieve. My major focus is to teach my two courses on development and aging on a multidisciplinary basis, the physiological approach serving as an effective link integrating the various biomedical disciplines. This approach has inspired the writing of several books on these two topics, the latest being the 3rd edition of Physiological Basis of Aging and Geriatrics (CRC Press, 2003) and, written in French, Stress, Adaptation, Longévité, (Editions Economica, 2004). A similar multidisciplinary approach is also emphasized in a five-year NIH grant (NIA Academic Career Leadership Award) which I received in 2001 to promote integrative research and education in aging and longevity at UCB.
“My research has followed a more tortuous path than my teaching. When I first retired, I was allowed to retain a small laboratory space on the merit of my teaching two classes and of still having funds for research and students eager to be trained. However, after many transfers to progressively smaller quarters, I was informed that laboratory space was no longer available to me, given the pressure of providing space for new faculty. Indeed, the establishment of policy for emeriti laboratory space is currently being debated on our campus. I was lucky to have the support of colleagues who helped me to obtain laboratory space close to campus (at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and of students, whose collaboration reflects their excellent academic preparation and maturity as well as a source of personal satisfaction.
“A first group of experiments shows that in the mouse hypothalamus, caloric restriction reduces the loss of estrogen receptors with aging. Given the association between suppression of Insulin/IGF-1 receptors and longevity in invertebrates and mice, we are currently studying the effects of caloric restriction on the mapping of IGF-1 receptors in the hypothalamus. In another group of experiments, growth factors added to neuroglia cultures not only stimulated cell proliferation, as expected, but also produced progressive de-differentiation of both astrocytes and oligodendrocytes and their transformation into ‘precursor’ cells. We are now investigating under which conditions these precursor cells may give rise to neuroblasts, as suggested by other investigators. A brief presentation of these studies can be found at: http://www.citeulike.org/user/ladygoat/article/72294.”
Letters to Gabor Kaley
Ed E. Daniel writes: “Thank you for writing and asking what I am doing now. First let me say that I am in general good health. In 1945, while in the US 63 Inf. Div. in Germany, I stepped on a mine along with two others when German fire drove us into a mine field. This resulted in a lower left leg prosthesis which has hardly limited my activities. However, I am a severe asthmatic, but that is now well-controlled.
“After getting my PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Utah in 1952, I moved to Canada under pressure from the McCarthy-McCarran paranoia about peace activists like me. It was a move I have never regretted. My first job was at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where I stayed until 1962.
“I recently returned to Edmonton, Alberta and the University of Alberta, where I became the first Chair of the new Department of Pharmacology in 1962. I was at McMaster University from 1975 until 2001 when I returned to Alberta. I had three goals: 1) get out of the air pollution of Hamilton and Southern Ontario; 2} continue with research and teaching which I enjoyed very much, but which were increasingly difficult at McMaster: and 3) move closer to my family, all of whom are in Alberta or British Columbia.
“The move was a great success and I am now Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the University here. I have a laboratory, even a Graduate Student, who will, I think, be the last PhD that I train. I try to be environmentally careful and use public transit to and from the University to keep Edmonton with liveable air pollution despite the high proportion of SUVs with single passengers.
“At McMaster, I became involved in Problem Based learning (PBL) and decided that it was the best way to educate students of an types. PBL is not so well established at the University of Alberta as it was at McMaster. I started an Honours/Graduate course on Drug Therapeutics using PBL, which has become popular with students and is fun to tutor. It also requires me to keep up my knowledge of drug usage using evidence-based medicine.
“My research is going along well. We have just started study of the effects of caveolin 1 knockout on gut function and we are continuing study of the pacing systems of the gut and the origins and transmission of pacing activities. We have published several manuscripts in the last year in the
American Journal of Physiology, Gastrointestinal and Liver
Physiology.
“I remain a committed peace activist and have recently been very active against Canadian involvement in the war on Iraq and most recently in keeping Canada out of the so-called Ballistic Missile Defense system. We are celebrating that apparent victory now. My wife is a member of the Raging Grannies, a fun group that dress up in their Granny
outfits and sing at protests. Canada has a multicultural society and this makes social and cultural life lively and fun.
“My wife’s family all live in Florida and we have a condominium there, which we visit every year. We are planning several travels in 2005; to Sicily, to the Yucatan and to visit family. Clearly life is full and remains much fun. Thank you for asking about it.”
John R. Pappenheimer writes: “I don’t suppose that there are many surviving members of the American Physiological Society who were born in 1915—Knut Schmidt-Nielsen and I are among them.
“My most recent original research paper was published in Journal of Physiology (London) in December of 2003 under the title Role of villus microcirculation in intestinal absorption of glucose: coupling of epithelial with endothelial transport. It comes 67 years after the first that was published in 1936 with Jeffries Wyman in
J.Amer. Chem.Soc. under the title “The surface tension of aqueous solutions of dipolar ions”. Editors of
J.Physiol. evidently liked the 2003 paper published with Charles Michel because they asked for a watered-down, non-technical version for publication as a feature article in Physiology News in 2004.”
“In 2004, also, two of my papers on Capillary Permeability that were originally published in
Amer. J. Physiol in 1948 and in 1951 were republished as part of the “Legacy Series” and our early papers on Neurohumoral Regulation of Sleep in PNAS and in
J.Physiol. were given a “Pioneer Award” by the International Society for Sleep Research. Of course, I am pleased that these contributions are still cited 40-50 years after their publication.
“I now reside in an assisted living environment isolated from laboratories and I can promise not to burden referees of physiological journals with any more manuscripts. My scientific activities will henceforth be to read chapter by chapter through The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts & Co. However, the residual storage. capacity of my 90-year-old memory bank is now so small that as I read Chapter (N+l) I forget the contents of Chapter N. Never mind, I find the story thrilling and I can understand why the Harvard Medical School decided to dismantle its famous 120 year old Department of Physiology in favor of Cell Biology. I have an uneasy feeling, however, that some of the 20 or so full Professors in the replacement department would be unable to explain to a 12 year old child how urine is formed, how body temperature is regulated, how the composition of body fluids is maintained approximately constant, how breathing is linked to exercise, etc. In fact, I am very glad not to be one of those cloned investigators who dissect a tiny piece of DNA in a cloned cubicle of a lab using cloned (very expensive) instruments cand who publish results in three-page papers in PNAS having acronymal titles with 10 co-authors
“‘nuf said.”
Letter to Alan Hofmann
Mordecai Popovtzer writes: Still active in research and paper/chapter writing. Retired as chief of Nephrology at Temple University in Philadelphia, and recently Chief of Nephrology at Hadassah, Jerusalem. Still active member in American Society of Clinical Investigation (“YOUNG TURKS”). I am concerned that physiologists today know more and more about less and less. Adopting and mastering new advanced technologies takes precedence over original intellectual creativity. Still confronting biased referees that control the leading journals. In most cases there is obvious inevitable conflict of interest as the referees are concerned about competition and their own research being
challenged. The truth however is pervasive and eventually ends up in less prestigious
journals. When I challenged the concept that NaPi-IIa might not be the only major tubular cotransporter it obviously was rated down, but eventually it was published in
Eur J Endocrinol (vide last ref in CV). I would strongly advice younger people not to give up if their convictions are based on truth.
Letter to Beverly Bishop
Horacio E. Cingolani writes: “I am so sorry for the delay in answering your kind letter. Maybe the delay was due to a Freudian slip by which I would like to negate the fact that I am 70 years old.
“Yes, I am continuing my scientific activity in spite of the fact that I am not any longer the Chairman and Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center. I am proud that my former postdoctoral fellow, Alicia Mattiazzi, is the Director of the Center. Everybody was very kind with me; I am in the same office (this bothers me a little bit) with a part-time secretary, and surrounded by ‘empty spaces’ that I am filling with research and by forming part of the Editorial Board of Circulation Research and Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.
“Again, it is my pleasure to have your letter on behalf of the American Physiological Society.”