DRAFT - NOT AN ARTICLE YET
Sheldon Penman | |
|---|---|
| Spouse(s) | Ava Penman, , |
| Children | 1 child with Ava Penman (Bry): Joshua Penman [1] (1979) Brookline, Massachusetts |
Sheldon Penman is a physicist, molecular biologist and cell biologist distinguished for having made seminal contributions in three separate fields, the non-conservation of parity, RNA metabolism and cellular architecture. Presently an emeritus professor of cell biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is a member (since 1986) of the National Academy of Sciences in the section of Cellular and developmental biology and received the E. B. Wilson Medal from the American Society for Cell Biology jointly with James Darnell in 1998.
Life
Born in Russia
Jewish [2]
He received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1954 from Pennsylvania State University [3]where he was on the Dean's list [4] and used his electrical engineering in a practical context when he and another student ran a "wired wireless" radio station [5] (shown in this newspaper photograph) [6]
He received a Ph.D. in high-energy physics from Columbia University in 1958 [7]. Anecdote of his insight and generosity: [8]
He became an assistant professor at MIT in 1962, and a full professor in 1971 [9]
His commitment to education at all levels was shown when he agreed to become a trustee, in 1968, of the Sudbury School during a difficult time for that institution. [10]
He supported South Vietnam as an "lively, vital and relatively open society that has made impressive strides in education, medical care, land reform, etc., against what seem insuperable obstacles." [11]
Trained with James Darnell [12] in Alex Rich's lab [13]
While at MIT I was also fortunate to be influenced by Salvador Luria, Cyrus Leventhal and Boris Magasanik, through courses, seminars, and personal discussions. At that time Sheldon Penman and Jim Darnell were also working in Alex Rich's laboratory. When placed in the same room, these two were particularly boisterous, providing comic relief to the fast moving era.
Graduate advisor to Robert Weinberg [14]
Guggenheim Fellow, 1982, Organismic Biology & Ecology [15]
Darnell's E. B. Wilson speech [16]
The Wilson citation (excerpt): [7]
Both awardees have made extra-ordinary contributions to the understanding of the cell biology of the nucleus, providing pioneering insights into eukaryotic RNA synthesis, maturation, function and metabolism, and setting the groundwork for subsequent discovery of introns and RNA splicing....[Subsequently] Penman concentrated on the architectural organization of the cytoplasm and nucleus matrix and went on to discover their roles in transcriptional regulation.
Matritech [17]- technology from Sheldon Penman and Edward Fey using antibodies to find proteins [18]
NYT article on Patent 4,882,268 for detecting cancers by their nuclear proteins
Scientific works
Nuclear physics
Non-conservation of parity in mu meson decay with Garwin (Fun with Muons)
NMR transition into biological molecules [19]
Molecular biology
Polyribosomes 1963
Cell Biology
The E. B. Wilson Award is the highest scientific honor conferred by the ASCB and is the highest award in cell biology.
His engineer's eye and constructive scepticism about common assumptions is represented in this quotation on information and biological form:
"Form and structure are not natural subjects for biochemistry that, in the macroscopic world, deals with scalar quantities--i.e., amounts, rates, etc. Building the complex designs glimpsed in any anatomy or physiology text requires, at the very least, instructions that are vectorial--i.e., that specify direction and place. These instructions are encoded somewhere--it seems very likely that they reside in the heavily transcribed but "non-protein coding" DNA. Building staggeringly complex organs--e.g., brains or kidneys--by simply specifying the constituent protein components (as suggested by the more extreme formulations of molecular biology that genes are simply proteins) is unlikely. Such a strategy would be tantamount to trying to specify a bridge or an edifice by merely giving a list of parts. Indeed, Gray's Anatomy, seen with an engineer's eye, suggests that the complexity of the instruction sets for mammalian morphology require large regions of the genome: very likely much of most of the currently ignored, non-protein coding, 90% (or more) of the genome. I suspect that future cell scientists will marvel at the density and ingenuity of genome instructions for structure while wondering how we could overlook them for so long" [20]
Targeting tumors with auxotrophs [21]
Patents
The practical orientation of an engineer combined with his growing understanding of the nucleus as structurally distinct and organized led to six patents issued to Sheldon Penman, listed below:
- 4885236 - A method for characterizing the origin and malignancy of cellular materials
- 4882268 - A method for determining the tissue of origin of a cell and degree the presence of malignancy
- 5273877 - Non-histological cell type determination
- 4569916 - Assay for tumor promoting agents
- RE35747 - Method for determining tissue of origin and presence and extent of cellular
- 5624799 - Cancer-associated mar binding protein
External links
Sheldon Penman book reviews at American Scientist
Governing Step of Metastasis Observed In Vivo
Penman publications through Scientific Commons
PubMed: more than 200 peer-reviewed publications
Early work on RNA synthesis and processing in Cell
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ Faculty at UMMS
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ American Scientist, brief bio
- ^ Pf. 14
- ^ Holding the Center
- ^ Pg. 56, Announcing a New School: A Personal Account of the Beginnings of the Sudbury Valley School By Daniel Greenberg Published by The Sudbury Valley School, 1973 ISBN 188894711X, 9781888947113 209 pages
- ^ SHELDON PENMAN, New York Times, November 12, 1972, Sunday Section: THE WEEK IN REVIEW, Page E10
- ^ Lasker Awards, 2002
- ^ Capecchi Nobel speech
- ^ pg. 49, Natural Obsessions : Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell Natalie Angier # Mariner Books (April 6, 1999) ISBN-10: 0395924723
- ^ Guggenheim Fellows
- ^ E. B. Wilson speech, the year they shared the medal
- ^ Matritech description
- ^ Pg. 43 Entrepreneurs in High Technology: Lessons from MIT and Beyond by Edward B. Roberts Oxford University Press, USA (August 22, 1991) ISBN-10: 0195067045
- ^ [6]
- ^ (p. 5257). Sheldon Penman, "Rethinking cell structure," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 92 (1995): 5251-57.
- ^ PNAS
T. Coffin, R. L. Garwin, L. M. Lederman, S. Penman, and A. M. Sachs, Phys. Rev., 107 (1957) 1108. magnetic moment of the µ meson can now be measured to an extremely high degree of accuracy
"Magnetic Moment of the Free Muon,"by T. Coffin, R.L. Garwin, L.M. Lederman, S. Penman, and A.M. Sachs, Physical Review 109, No. 3, pp. 973-979, February 1, 1958.
An Accurate Determination of the [mu]+ Magnetic Moment, Richard Lawrence Garwin, D. P. Hutchinson, Sheldon Penman, Gilbert Shapiro, Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory Columbia University, Physics Department, 1959
Magnetic Moment of the Free Muon, Sheldon Penman, Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory, Columbia University, Physics Dept., 1958 Endeavors on Lee McIlwain
DRAFT - NOT AN ARTICLE YET
Sheldon Penman | |
|---|---|
| Spouse(s) | Ava Penman, , |
| Children | 1 child with Ava Penman (Bry): Joshua Penman [1] (1979) Brookline, Massachusetts |
Sheldon Penman is a physicist, molecular biologist and cell biologist distinguished for having made seminal contributions in three separate fields, the non-conservation of parity, RNA metabolism and cellular architecture. Presently an emeritus professor of cell biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is a member (since 1986) of the National Academy of Sciences in the section of Cellular and developmental biology and received the E. B. Wilson Medal from the American Society for Cell Biology jointly with James Darnell in 1998.
Life
Born in Russia
Jewish [2]
He received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1954 from Pennsylvania State University [3]where he was on the Dean's list [4] and used his electrical engineering in a practical context when he and another student ran a "wired wireless" radio station [5] (shown in this newspaper photograph) [6]
He received a Ph.D. in high-energy physics from Columbia University in 1958 [7]. Anecdote of his insight and generosity: [8]
He became an assistant professor at MIT in 1962, and a full professor in 1971 [9]
His commitment to education at all levels was shown when he agreed to become a trustee, in 1968, of the Sudbury School during a difficult time for that institution. [10]
He supported South Vietnam as an "lively, vital and relatively open society that has made impressive strides in education, medical care, land reform, etc., against what seem insuperable obstacles." [11]
Trained with James Darnell [12] in Alex Rich's lab [13]
While at MIT I was also fortunate to be influenced by Salvador Luria, Cyrus Leventhal and Boris Magasanik, through courses, seminars, and personal discussions. At that time Sheldon Penman and Jim Darnell were also working in Alex Rich's laboratory. When placed in the same room, these two were particularly boisterous, providing comic relief to the fast moving era.
Graduate advisor to Robert Weinberg [14]
Guggenheim Fellow, 1982, Organismic Biology & Ecology [15]
Darnell's E. B. Wilson speech [16]
The Wilson citation (excerpt): [7]
Both awardees have made extra-ordinary contributions to the understanding of the cell biology of the nucleus, providing pioneering insights into eukaryotic RNA synthesis, maturation, function and metabolism, and setting the groundwork for subsequent discovery of introns and RNA splicing....[Subsequently] Penman concentrated on the architectural organization of the cytoplasm and nucleus matrix and went on to discover their roles in transcriptional regulation.
Matritech [17]- technology from Sheldon Penman and Edward Fey using antibodies to find proteins [18]
NYT article on Patent 4,882,268 for detecting cancers by their nuclear proteins
Scientific works
Nuclear physics
Non-conservation of parity in mu meson decay with Garwin (Fun with Muons)
NMR transition into biological molecules [19]
Molecular biology
Polyribosomes 1963
Cell Biology
The E. B. Wilson Award is the highest scientific honor conferred by the ASCB and is the highest award in cell biology.
His engineer's eye and constructive scepticism about common assumptions is represented in this quotation on information and biological form:
"Form and structure are not natural subjects for biochemistry that, in the macroscopic world, deals with scalar quantities--i.e., amounts, rates, etc. Building the complex designs glimpsed in any anatomy or physiology text requires, at the very least, instructions that are vectorial--i.e., that specify direction and place. These instructions are encoded somewhere--it seems very likely that they reside in the heavily transcribed but "non-protein coding" DNA. Building staggeringly complex organs--e.g., brains or kidneys--by simply specifying the constituent protein components (as suggested by the more extreme formulations of molecular biology that genes are simply proteins) is unlikely. Such a strategy would be tantamount to trying to specify a bridge or an edifice by merely giving a list of parts. Indeed, Gray's Anatomy, seen with an engineer's eye, suggests that the complexity of the instruction sets for mammalian morphology require large regions of the genome: very likely much of most of the currently ignored, non-protein coding, 90% (or more) of the genome. I suspect that future cell scientists will marvel at the density and ingenuity of genome instructions for structure while wondering how we could overlook them for so long" [20]
Targeting tumors with auxotrophs [21]
Patents
The practical orientation of an engineer combined with his growing understanding of the nucleus as structurally distinct and organized led to six patents issued to Sheldon Penman, listed below:
- 4885236 - A method for characterizing the origin and malignancy of cellular materials
- 4882268 - A method for determining the tissue of origin of a cell and degree the presence of malignancy
- 5273877 - Non-histological cell type determination
- 4569916 - Assay for tumor promoting agents
- RE35747 - Method for determining tissue of origin and presence and extent of cellular
- 5624799 - Cancer-associated mar binding protein
External links
Sheldon Penman book reviews at American Scientist
Governing Step of Metastasis Observed In Vivo
Penman publications through Scientific Commons
PubMed: more than 200 peer-reviewed publications
Early work on RNA synthesis and processing in Cell
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ Faculty at UMMS
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ American Scientist, brief bio
- ^ Pf. 14
- ^ Holding the Center
- ^ Pg. 56, Announcing a New School: A Personal Account of the Beginnings of the Sudbury Valley School By Daniel Greenberg Published by The Sudbury Valley School, 1973 ISBN 188894711X, 9781888947113 209 pages
- ^ SHELDON PENMAN, New York Times, November 12, 1972, Sunday Section: THE WEEK IN REVIEW, Page E10
- ^ Lasker Awards, 2002
- ^ Capecchi Nobel speech
- ^ pg. 49, Natural Obsessions : Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell Natalie Angier # Mariner Books (April 6, 1999) ISBN-10: 0395924723
- ^ Guggenheim Fellows
- ^ E. B. Wilson speech, the year they shared the medal
- ^ Matritech description
- ^ Pg. 43 Entrepreneurs in High Technology: Lessons from MIT and Beyond by Edward B. Roberts Oxford University Press, USA (August 22, 1991) ISBN-10: 0195067045
- ^ [6]
- ^ (p. 5257). Sheldon Penman, "Rethinking cell structure," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 92 (1995): 5251-57.
- ^ PNAS
T. Coffin, R. L. Garwin, L. M. Lederman, S. Penman, and A. M. Sachs, Phys. Rev., 107 (1957) 1108. magnetic moment of the µ meson can now be measured to an extremely high degree of accuracy
"Magnetic Moment of the Free Muon,"by T. Coffin, R.L. Garwin, L.M. Lederman, S. Penman, and A.M. Sachs, Physical Review 109, No. 3, pp. 973-979, February 1, 1958.
An Accurate Determination of the [mu]+ Magnetic Moment, Richard Lawrence Garwin, D. P. Hutchinson, Sheldon Penman, Gilbert Shapiro, Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory Columbia University, Physics Department, 1959
Magnetic Moment of the Free Muon, Sheldon Penman, Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory, Columbia University, Physics Dept., 1958 Endeavors on Lee McIlwain