1) BCMP is sad to announce the passing of one of our former Associate Professors, DR. ALEX NUSSBAUM.
Alexander L. Nussbaum, PhD, the retired associate professor of
Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, died on June 22, 2007,
at age 81. Dr. Nussbaum received his BS at City College of New York in
1948, his MS at Purdue University in 1950, and conducted his doctoral
work in chemistry at Wayne State University. In 1975, Dr. Nussbaum
joined the Harvard Medical School community as a visiting professor of
Biological Chemistry. In 1977 he returned to HMS as associate
professor of Biological Chemistry, then joined the Boston Biomedical
Research Institute in 1982 where he established a research program on
the synthesis of oligonucleotides. That same year he moved to the
Longwood Campus of HMS where he served as Director of Laboratories of
the Department of Biological Chemistry until 1987. During this period
he continued his research and established one of the first facilities
for the synthesis of oligonucleotides at HMS.
Dr. Nussbaum was known as a polymath and could spontaneously
discuss in depth, in any of his several languages, any subject thrown
upon the table. As his longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Charles
Richardson, said, “Long before one could ‘Google it’ you could ‘Just
Ask Alex.’” Alex Nussbaum retired from Harvard Medical School in 2006.
Dr. Nussbaum is survived by his wife Ruth, his children, Michael,
Daniel, Beth, and their spouses, five grandchildren, his sister Inge
(Nussbaum) Rothenstreich, and her daughters.
BCMP SCIENCE NEWS:
2) Congratulations to the following BCMP scientists who, earlier
this year, received funding awards in the second Taplin Funds for
Discovery competition:
--DR. JON CLARDY for his proposal to upgrade and relocate the
400MHz NMR and to upgrade the 600 MHz NMR in the East Quad NMR Facility
--DR. FRITZ ROTH for his proposal to purchase an Illumina 1G Genomic Analyzer
NOTICES:
3) The dissertation defense seminar of ALLAN M. GURTAN,
“Characterization of a Novel E3 Ubiquitin Ligase in Fanconi Anemia”,
will be held Friday, July 20, at 10:00 a.m. in TMEC, room 227.
4) Congratulations to FRED LUNA and STEPHANIE MOHR for recently receiving Peer 2 Peer nominations for their outstanding work.
5) Copies of the BCMP group photo are for sale, this year for only
$5.00. If you would like to purchase a copy, please see Eric in
C-213b.
WELCOME:
6) SEBASTIAN HILLER (Wagner lab) received his M.S. in
interdisciplinary science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He completed
his Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Dr. Kurt Wüthrich at the Institute for
Molecular Biology and Biophysics at ETH Zurich (thesis title: "NMR
methods for studies of folded and unfolded forms of globular
proteins"). In Dr. Wagner's lab he attempts to determine the structure
of the voltage dependent anion channel (VDAC), a protein from the human
mitochondrial outer membrane.