Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 3, 2003|Volume 32, Number 5

Symposium celebrates career
of biochemist Donald Crothers

A symposium honoring the research and teaching career of Donald M. Crothers, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, will take place on Saturday, Oct. 11.

The event, which will feature talks by several of Crothers' colleagues, will be held 9 a.m.-5 p.m. in Rm. 110 of Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, 225 Prospect St. The talks are open to the public free of charge.

Crothers, who is also professor emeritus of molecular biophysics and biochemistry and senior research scientist in chemistry, displayed his research talent at an early age. He was a National Finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search in 1954 and went on to earn a B.S. in chemistry summa cum laude at Yale in 1958. He joined the Yale chemistry faculty in 1964, after completing his doctoral research at the University of California San Diego in 1963 and postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany.

At Yale, Crothers is known as an outstanding teacher, who has trained over 60 Ph.D. students. He led the Department of Chemistry through periods of growth as its chair 1975-1981 and 1994-1999.

His research interests encompass the physical chemistry of biological polymers, particularly that of nucleic acids. For his many contributions in this area, Crothers received numerous awards including Alfred P. Sloan and Guggenheim fellowships, as well as the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Prize.

He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986, inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1987 and named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992.

He also served on the editorial board of numerous journals including Biochemistry, Journal of Molecular Biology, Biopolymers, Nucleic Acid Research and the Quarterly Review of Biophysics.

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