Howard Berg, a Grand Mas­ter of Mi­cro­bial Motil­ity (1934─2021)

by Ar­i­ane Briegel

Not many scien­tists be­come le­gends, even fewer achieve this sta­tus du­ring their own life­time. How­ever, Howard Berg was cer­tain­ly one of them. He was un­doubt­ed­ly an ex­cep­tion­al scien­tist that in­spired a large co­hort of stu­dents, post­docs, and peers.

Howard Berg. Photo Credit Eliza Wolf­son

Trained as a physi­cist, he be­came in­ter­ested in bac­te­r­ial mo­tility early in his ca­reer and con­tin­ued work on under­standing this sys­tem at Har­vard, the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado and Cal­tech. Build­ing his own mi­cro­scope, he was able to trace the move­ments of bac­te­ria. He is most well-known for dis­cov­er­ing that fla­gel­lated bac­te­ria are pro­pelled through their en­vi­ron­ment by a ro­tary mo­tor. Howard also contri­buted greatly to our un­der­stand­ing of how bac­te­ria navi­gate their en­vi­ron­ment by a bi­ased ran­dom walk. He spent a long fruit­ful ca­reer un­cov­er­ing the in­ner work­ings of bac­terial motil­ity by us­ing his sharp in­tel­lect and self-built tools. Howard was not only an out­stand­ing sci­en­tist but also an in­spi­ra­tional teacher and men­tor. Anec­dotes of his mem­o­rable live demon­stra­tions which he used to con­vey his in­sights are leg­endary in the mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal com­mu­nity. Un­til the end of his re­mark­able life he con­tin­ued to ac­tively pur­sue re­search and men­tor­ing his lab mem­bers.

Howard in­creas­ingly be­came a liv­ing leg­end. For ex­am­ple, Howard's ca­reer be­came topic of a mi­ni­review by Michael Man­son en­ti­tled "Howard's ran­dom walk through Bi­ol­ogy." This in­sight­ful piece gives an overview of his sci­en­tific con­tri­bu­tions as well as per­sonal per­spec­tives from sev­eral for­mer lab mem­bers and col­leagues. An­other ex­am­ple is the 2021 "Bac­te­r­ial Lo­co­mo­tion and Sig­nal Trans­duc­tion Meet­ing (BLAST)" that held its keynote ses­sion in Howard's honor.

When­ever Howard would at­tend a sci­en­tific event, he would be met with ad­mi­ra­tion and awe from the other at­ten­dees. While this rev­er­ence was cer­tainly jus­ti­fied, it of­ten masked his won­der­ful sense of hu­mor. When I first met Howard, I was so in­cred­i­bly in­tim­i­dated by his light-speed think­ing and deep sci­en­tific knowl­edge, that I barely man­aged to have a co­her­ent con­ver­sa­tion with him. But I quickly dis­cov­ered his dry sense of hu­mor. He could be wickedly funny while keep­ing a straight face, and only the sparkle in his eyes would give him away. He was al­ready in his 80s when I started col­lab­o­rat­ing with Howard, and I even got one of his home-built de­vices to pur­sue our com­mon re­search goals. I am grate­ful for his ad­vice and men­tor­ship when I was a new fac­ulty and count my­self very lucky to have briefly been able to work with him.

I am only one of many sci­en­tists that will deeply miss Howard, both as a won­der­ful hu­man be­ing as well as an in­spir­ing sci­en­tist. He may be gone, but he will cer­tainly not be for­got­ten. Many ge­nerations of sci­en­tists will build on Howard Berg's in­sights into the motil­ity be­hav­ior of mi­crobes.

You find the record­ings of a two-part lec­ture by Howard Berg in the iBi­ol­ogy chan­nel on YouTube; here is part 1 (31:33 min), and here part 2 (30:08 min).
 
 

Ar­i­ane is a pro­fes­sor at Lei­den Uni­ver­sity in The Nether­lands. Her lab fo­cuses on in­ves­ti­gat­ing how mi­crobes sense and re­spond to their en­vi­ron­ment and ex­plores the struc­tures and func­tions of the mol­e­c­u­lar com­plexes in­volved in these be­hav­iors.