Biographical Memoirs Volume 85 (2004) / Chapter Skim
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William David McElroy
William David McElroy
Pages 164-183
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From page 164... ...
California Jolla, La Gesu, di Anthony by Photo
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From page 165... ...
He was on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University, where from 1946 until 1969 he was the founding director of the McCollum-Pratt Institute, and from 1956 to 1969 the chairman of the biology department. He was a member of many professional scientific societies and served as president of several, including three of the largest: the American Society of Biological Chemists, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the 116,000member American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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From page 166... ...
during World War II. From 1945 to 1946 he held a National Research Council Fellowship at Stanford, working with George Beadle, where he also developed close scientific relationships with Edward Tatum and Cornelius van Niel.
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, in which he showed that light emission in extracts of the firefly lantern required adenosine triphosphate (ATP) , a recently identified "high-energy" molecule in metabolism (Lipmann, 1941)
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Upon Willier's retirement McElroy assumed the chairmanship of the biology department at Hopkins and built a very strong department, in both research and teaching. Andre Jagendorf testifies to his effectiveness as chair, saying that Mac shielded faculty from administration, meaning, however, that faculty might not be consulted in many important decisions.
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From page 169... ...
. "The chirality issue started by Bill's lecture has kept the space biology community riled for 28 years." McElroy's strong beliefs in quality education for all led to his involvement in the Baltimore city schools and junior college; he served as a member of the Board of School Commissioners for the city from 1958 to 1968 and chairman of the Board of Trustees for Baltimore Junior College in 1968 and 1969.
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From page 170... ...
But his strong administrative style, which had been so successful earlier, met opposition from other administrators and faculty; therefore, in 1980 he returned to full-time research and teaching as a professor of biology. A distinguished lectureship in biology was endowed in his honor, and a garden and terrace adjacent to the Mandeville Auditorium named for him.
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In that, they were frustrated by the occurrence of luminescence in controls lacking luciferase, which thereby led to their important discovery of delayed light emission in plants (Strehler and Arnold, 1951; Arnold, 1986)
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In 2004 a search of literature on the Web gave hundreds of hits yearly for firefly luciferase, the great majority being concerned with clinical and research applications. In La Jolla, Bill and Marlene established one of the early biotech firms, the Analytical Luminescence Laboratory, which provided many of the agents and reagents for various uses.
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From page 173... ...
These had just become generally available; indeed, this was the only air-conditioned room at the time in the biology department, probably in all of Johns Hopkins. So it came about that on certain very hot summer evenings my lab was reserved for a poker game hosted by Mac, with the dean of faculty, the provost, and a few other key players as guests.
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From page 174... ...
Veterans attest to Mac's uncanny ability to regularly finish the evening with sizable winnings, and he typically wore a cap with a green celluloid visor with Magic Marker writing, "Make checks payable to W
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Not nutritionists, but four of the best young biochemists in the country, now deceased: Sidney Colowick and Nate Kaplan, who later initiated the series "Methods in Enzymology" (Colowick and Kaplan, 1955) , which is still going strong today, 50 years later, with over 380 volumes; Al Nason, a plant biochemist with whom McElroy later collaborated on effects of micronutrients on enzyme activity (1953)
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From page 176... ...
He was very active on editorial boards of many professional journals and was a founding editor of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. In 1958 he became the editor with Carl Swanson of
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, he was the second choice, after an offer to Franklin Long of Cornell was withdrawn when it was learned that Long had opposed Nixon's proposed antiballistic missile system. McElroy was said to have been similarly opposed but was quiet about it, viewing government service as a way to promote science and to get increased funding for research.
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McElroy III, and Michael James McElroy; and three great-grandchildren: Timothy Alexander Holman, Jr., Emily Madison Holman, and Nicholas Holman.
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1986. Transient and stable expression of the fire fly luciferase gene in plant cells and transgenic plants.
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Miller. The effect of nitrogen mustard pretreatment on the ultra-violet-induced morphological and bio chemical mutation rate.
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Spectral emission and quantum yield of firefly bioluminescence.
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From page 182... ...
Complementary DNA coding click beetle luciferases can elicit bioluminescence of different colors. Science 244:700-702.
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