Biophysical Society Newsletter
2
february
2014
Biophysical Society
Officers
President
Francisco Bezanilla
President-Elect
Dorothy Beckett
Past-President
Jane Richardson
Secretary
Lukas Tamm
Treasurer
Paul Axelsen
Council
Karen Fleming
Taekjip Ha
Amy Harkins
Samantha Harris
Peter Hinterdorfer
Juliette Lecomte
Amy Lee
Marcia Levitus
Marjorie Longo
Merritt Maduke
Daniel Minor, Jr.
Jeanne Nerbonne
Gail Robertson
Claudia Veigel
Antoine van Oijen
Bonnie Wallace
David Yue
Biophysical Journal
Leslie Loew
Editor-in-Chief
Society Office
Ro Kampman
Executive Officer
Newsletter
Alisha Yocum
Monika Zakrzewska
Production
Laura Phelan
Profile
Ellen Weiss
Public Affairs
The
Biophysical Society Newsletter
(ISSN 0006-3495) is published
twelve times per year, January-
December, by the Biophysical
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Biophysicist in Profile
dorothy Beckett
“
I love the surprises
that result from research,
because they force me to
think in ways that I could
not have contemplated.
”
–
Dorothy Beckett
As a child, incoming Biophysical Society President
Dorothy Beckett
showed an
early interest in the natural world. She collected bugs, performed experiments,
and explored the world around her. It was in high school that Beckett really
became interested in studying science in a formal setting. During this time,
she attended a weekly series at Yale University, where she was able to visit
laboratories and see sophisticated scientific equipment. Beckett and the other
students also attended lectures on a broad range of scientific topics.
Though she was interested in science, Beckett began her college career at Barnard
College studying Chinese. After spending a year abroad in Taiwan, she real-
ized that a career in Sinology would not be as intellectually satisfying for her as
a future in science would. She continued studying Chinese
after returning to the US, but committed to a major in
chemistry. Beckett was able to obtain a work-study job in
Cathy Squires’s
laboratory in the Columbia University Biol-
ogy Department. It was during her time there that Beckett
first discovered biophysics: “I distinctly recall being asked to
present a group meeting on a paper from the literature, and
ended up choosing one published by the Cozarrelli labora-
tory on DNA gyrase.This paper revealed to me that I could
apply the quantitative approaches that I was learning in my
chemistry courses to understanding biology.” Her focus was
further shifted toward the biophysical by
Charles Cantor
and
Jonathan Greer
, who
taught Beckett in her undergraduate years.
After receiving her AB in chemistry from Barnard College, Beckett pursued a
PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois in the lab of
Olke Uhlenbeck
.
As an advisor, Uhlenbeck encouraged Beckett to think quantitatively about biol-
ogy. In her PhD project, she studied coupled equilibria in virus assembly. While
at the University of Illinois, Beckett also took classes with
Gregorio Weber
, a
pioneer in biological fluorescence spectroscopy. Beckett says, “[Weber] thought
deeply about thermodynamic coupling in biology. His lectures on this topic
were so inspiring for me that I attended his course twice.”
Attending the University of Illinois was quite a change of scenery for Beckett
after completing her undergraduate degree in New York City.
Catherine Royer
, a
colleague who met Beckett while they were in graduate school together, recalls a
particular occasion when the two lost their way in a cornfield after a Biochemis-
try Department retreat in the country. “Coming from Barnard, Dorothy was in
pretty big culture shock in central Illinois. I don’t think she had ever been lost in
a cornfield before! Anyway, we finally found our way back by looking for trees. In
central Illinois, about the only place you find trees is in towns—just the opposite
of the east coast. I remember she found this really strange,” Royer recalls.
Once she had obtained her PhD, Beckett arranged a postdoc to study with both
Bob Sauer
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and
Gary Ackers
at
