Two Less

by Elio

Two peo­ple who mat­tered to me and to many other peo­ple have died re­cently. I wish to honor their mem­ory by shar­ing a glimpse of them with you.

Manny Suter

Manny Suter

Manny died on Jan­u­ary 8, 2014, one month shy of his 96th birth­day. A mem­ber of a dis­tin­guished Swiss fam­ily, he earned his MD in Basel and soon there­after went to New York City to work with the fa­bled Rene Du­bos at the Rock­e­feller, train­ing in im­muno­log­i­cal as­pects of the tu­ber­cle bacil­lus. From there he moved to Har­vard Med­ical School, and later he ac­cepted the po­si­tion as chair of the new mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy de­part­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Florida Med­ical School. I joined this de­part­ment shortly af­ter­wards and was priv­i­leged to work un­der Manny for the next four years. Our de­part­ment be­came quite dis­tin­guished in a short time, thanks to his in­no­v­a­tive and hugely hu­man­is­tic ap­proach to teach­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tion. Fol­low­ing his in­stincts, he de­vel­oped a se­ries of dis­tinctly Su­ter­ian 'In­stant Tra­di­tions' that both taught and in­spired. For in­stance, he had the med­ical school fac­ulty gather in the cafe­te­ria to dis­cuss is­sues as wide-rang­ing as the phi­los­o­phy be­hind test­ing and grad­ing, along with ques­tions as spe­cific as: "Should a qual­i­fied ap­pli­cant with a di­ag­no­sis of schiz­o­phre­nia be ad­mit­ted to med­ical school?" (His an­swer was yes.) He main­tained that "Peo­ple don't ex­ist for in­sti­tu­tions; in­sti­tu­tions ex­ist for peo­ple."

In his re­search, he in­oc­u­lated in­nu­mer­able mice with the at­ten­u­ated tu­ber­cle bacil­lus BCG in or­der to probe into a phe­nom­e­non he had dis­cov­ered, that mice in­fected with BCG be­come ex­quis­itely sen­si­tive to en­do­toxin (LPS). This work spear­headed ef­forts that led to an un­der­stand­ing of the com­plex in­ter­ac­tion be­tween macrophages, LPS, and what are now called cy­tokines. De­spite lead­ing a pro­duc­tive re­search pro­gram, he did not short-change the med stu­dents. In the late 50's, re­search was so pre­dom­i­nant in med­ical schools that teach­ing was be­com­ing some­thing of an af­ter­thought (a sad fact that some main­tain holds to this day). Not so there. Manny made us teach our butts off and like it. His tools were per­sua­sion and oc­ca­sional dry hu­mor. For ex­am­ple: The then dean of the Med­ical School was par­tic­u­larly proud of our build­ings and in­volved in its run­ning (he called the el­e­va­tors "ver­ti­cal trans­porta­tion"). He noted with dis­tress that our hall­way was ever so clut­tered with re­frig­er­a­tors and in­cu­ba­tors. He said, "When­ever I come up here, there is an­other piece of equip­ment in the hall­way." To which Manny replied, "Then don't come up here!"

Manny even­tu­ally be­came dean of the med­ical school him­self and used that po­si­tion to ef­fect eth­nic in­te­gra­tion of the Uni­ver­sity of Florida. Thanks to his ef­forts, the very first African-Amer­i­can to en­roll at the uni­ver­sity en­tered as a med­ical stu­dent. What a proud achieve­ment! He left many other traces of his ad­min­is­tra­tive skills (which makes me won­der if mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists haven't been over­rep­re­sented in the ranks of aca­d­e­mic ad­min­is­tra­tors). Manny went on to hold var­i­ous im­por­tant po­si­tions in the field of med­ical ed­u­ca­tion and con­tin­ued to shape its de­vel­op­ment un­til his death.

Manny's word was as good as gold. He em­bod­ied hon­esty and forth­right­ness and knew how to en­dow an in­sti­tu­tion with such traits. What a first boss to have had!

Boris Ma­g­a­sanik

Boris Ma­g­a­sanik

Boris died on Christ­mas, 2013, also as a nona­ge­nar­ian who had been one of the found­ing fa­thers of mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy. He elu­ci­dated the reg­u­la­tion of ni­tro­gen me­tab­o­lism in bac­te­ria as Monod, Ja­cob, et al., had done for car­bon me­tab­o­lism. Boris's con­tri­bu­tions had an es­pe­cially holis­tic fla­vor and as such they played a sin­gu­lar role in en­hanc­ing our un­der­stand­ing of bac­te­r­ial phys­i­ol­ogy. Sys­tems bi­ol­o­gists (the cur­rent term for bac­te­r­ial phys­i­ol­o­gists) may do well to study these pi­o­neer­ing ef­forts. To­gether with Gra­ham Walker, Boris taught a cel­e­brated course on bac­te­r­ial phys­i­ol­ogy that in­flu­enced many MIT un­der­grad­u­ates, some­times en­tic­ing them to change their ca­reer choices. His brief mem­oirs can be found here.

Boris's key dis­cov­er­ies in­clude, among oth­ers, the role of up­stream en­hancers in gene reg­u­la­tion, the ex­is­tence of a novel sigma fac­tor ded­i­cated to ni­tro­gen me­tab­o­lism, and the role of two-com­po­nent sys­tems in cel­lu­lar sig­nal­ing. What led him to these in­sight­ful ad­vances may well have been his ground­ing in bio­chem­istry. Per­mit me an ob­ser­va­tion. Boris en­ti­tled his 1999 Per­spec­tives pa­per in the Jour­nal of Bac­te­ri­ol­ogy: A Mid­cen­tury Wa­ter­shed: the Tran­si­tion from Mi­cro­bial Bio­chem­istry to Mol­e­c­u­lar Bi­ol­ogy. There is some­thing slightly para­dox­i­cal about this ti­tle be­cause it im­plies that many bio­chemists of that day – at least the mi­cro­bially ori­ented ones – had trans­muted into mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gists. Bio­chem­istry in­deed had reigned supreme for quite a few decades be­fore the 1940's and thus pre­ceded mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy. How­ever, with no­table ex­cep­tions, pro­por­tion­ally few bio­chemists made that change and kept to bio­chem­istry. Most of the found­ing fa­thers of mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy were physi­cists or were bi­ol­o­gists of a dif­fer­ent stripe. The rea­sons for all this may de­serve fur­ther con­tem­pla­tion, but not to­day.

So, Boris was one of the rel­a­tively few who en­tered the new sci­ence with a stor­ing bio­chem­i­cal back­ground. The sub­ject of his the­sis, un­der the famed and acer­bic Er­win Char­gaff, re­flected the clas­si­cal bio­chem­istry of the day: the steric re­quire­ments of poly­hy­droxy de­riv­a­tives of cy­clo­hexane for ox­i­da­tion by Ace­to­bac­ter sub­oxy­dans. Al­though his men­tor pro­claimed that mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy was a sham car­ried out by bio­chem­i­cal ig­no­ra­muses, Boris em­braced it early on and be­came one of its most ar­tic­u­late pro­po­nents. To me this will­ing­ness of his to shift gears was an un­mis­tak­able sign of the springi­ness of his mind.

A prod­uct of the Vi­en­nese Gym­na­sium, Boris came to sci­ence with an un­usu­ally broad back­ground. He and his first wife, Adele, amassed a ma­jor col­lec­tion of African art about which he could talk in de­tail and with much ev­i­dent plea­sure. Hav­ing lived in Boston for many of the years that Boris spent there and in Cam­bridge, I had the plea­sure of be­ing with him and Adele on many oc­ca­sions, both in their art-laden apart­ment and else­where. It was al­ways a spe­cial event. Boris was equally at home dis­cussing ei­ther sci­ence or his­tory and lit­er­a­ture, or all fo them at the same time. I re­mem­ber once notic­ing that he was hav­ing a heated dis­cus­sion with Sal­vador Luria, an­other poly­math. Hop­ing to gather some pearl of sci­en­tific wis­dom, I slinked near them enough to hear what they were say­ing. They were hav­ing an ar­gu­ment about the his­tor­i­cal role of some prince of Savoy!

Per­haps Boris's great­est legacy is em­bod­ied in his stu­dents, an im­pres­sive list that in­cludes quite a large num­ber of men and women who went on to be­come lu­mi­nar­ies in their own fields. The rea­son is sim­ple to fathom: he was a rare ex­per­i­menter and thinker and his will­ing­ness to teach was un­matched. His very pres­ence was in­spir­ing and so was the de­vo­tion he ex­tended to his col­leagues. He chaired MIT's Bi­ol­ogy de­part­ment from 1967 to 1977, the decade that it be­come one of the best any­where. I do not hes­i­tate to state that his com­bi­na­tion of per­sonal and in­tel­lec­tual qual­i­ties was as re­mark­able as any I have known.