BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
4
JUNE
2014
Six Society members, listed below, were re-
cently elected members of the National Acad-
emy of Science for their work and achieve-
ments in original research.
Dale Boger
Scripps Research Institute
Society Member since 2014
Joseph Puglisi
Stanford University
Society Member since 1998
Brenda Schulman
St. Jude Children’s Research
Hospital
Society Member since 2011
Howard Stone
Princeton University
Society Member since 2010
G. Marius Clore (not pictured)
National Institutes of Health
Society Member since 2009
David Shaw (not pictured)
D.E. Shaw Research
Society Member since 2010
Members in the News
Obituary
Donald M. Crothers
Donald M. Crothers
was a pioneer in nucleic
acid physical chemistry and protein-nucleic acid
interaction. He graduated from Yale University
in 1958, earned a second BA from the University
of Cambridge, completed his PhD.with
Bruno
Zimm
at UCSD, worked with
Manfred Eigen
in Göttingen, and then joined the Chemistry
faculty at Yale in 1964. He served for 12 years
as chair of the Chemistry Department and was
a founding member of the Molecular Biophysics
and Biochemistry Department. He trained 67
PhD graduates and ~25 postdocs before retiring
from Yale in 2003 and becoming a partner and
consultant for biotechnology companies. Croth-
ers’ work was characterized by interpreting bio-
chemical and spectroscopic experiments with the
greatest possible physical rigor. He was admired
for his remarkable intellectual agility and deep
insight. He made fundamental contributions to
understanding the helix-coil transition in DNA,
the thermodynamics of nucleic acid secondary
and tertiary structure, DNA-drug interactions,
hierarchical tRNA folding, chromatin structure
and nucleosome positioning, sequence-directed
and protein-induced DNA bending, the speci-
ficity of DNA- and RNA-protein recognition,
the regulation of transcription initiation, DNA
cyclization kinetics, and the mechanism of ribo-
switches. He co-invented the Zimm-Crothers
viscometer and the electrophoretic mobility shift
assay, and after retiring he worked on long-range
chromosome mapping. He published more
than 350 papers, cited more than 20,000 times
to date. With
Victor Bloomfield
and
Ignacio
Tinoco
, Crothers co-authored two influential
books on nucleic acids. With
David Eisenberg
,
he wrote the 1979 textbook
Physical Chemistry
with Applications to the Life Sciences
, for which
they received the 2008 Emily M. Gray Award
from the Biophysical Society. Crothers received
many research awards, including election to the
National Academy of Sciences in 1987. He was
a strong supporter of women in science through-
out his career. Crothers passed away on March
16, 2014. He is survived by his wife of 54 years
Leena Kareoja-Crothers, two sisters, two daugh-
ters, and four grandchildren.
—
Jason D. Kahn
, University of Maryland,
College Park
Donald M.
Crothers
