Daniel Edward Koshland, Jr. (30 March 1920, New York City - 23 July 2007, Walnut Creek, California) reorganized the study of biology at the University of California at Berkeley and was the editor of the leading US science journal,
ScienceScience 80 was a general science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science . It was intended to "bridge the distance between science and citizen", aimed at a technically literate audience who may not work professionally in the sciences...
, during the decade 1985-1995. He was a Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Koshland's private fortune, derived from
Levi StraussLevi Strauss, born Löb Strauss was a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States who founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans...
put him on lists of America's wealthiest men.
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Daniel Edward Koshland, Jr. (30 March 1920, New York City - 23 July 2007, Walnut Creek, California) reorganized the study of biology at the University of California at Berkeley and was the editor of the leading US science journal,
ScienceScience 80 was a general science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science . It was intended to "bridge the distance between science and citizen", aimed at a technically literate audience who may not work professionally in the sciences...
, during the decade 1985-1995. He was a Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Koshland's private fortune, derived from
Levi StraussLevi Strauss, born Löb Strauss was a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States who founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans...
put him on lists of America's wealthiest men. His early work was in
enzyme kineticsEnzyme kinetics is the study of the chemical reactions that are catalysed by enzymes. In enzyme kinetics the reaction rate is measured and the effects of varying the conditions of the reaction investigated...
at
Brookhaven National LaboratoryBrookhaven National Laboratory , is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base...
, Long Island, and
Rockefeller UniversityThe Rockefeller University is a private university which focuses primarily on basic research in the biomedical fields and offers graduate and postgraduate education. It is located between 63rd and 68th Streets along York Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York...
, New York. This led him to propose the induced fit model for
enzyme catalysisEnzyme catalysis is the catalysis of chemical reactions by specialized proteins known as enzymes. Catalysis of biochemical reactions in the cell is vital due to the very low reaction rates of the uncatalysed reactions....
. After this advance, he turned to studying the how
bacteriaThe bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
control their movements in
chemotaxisChemotaxis is the phenomenon in which bodily cells, bacteria, and other single-cell or multicellular organisms direct their movements according to certain chemicals in their environment. This is important for bacteria to find food by swimming towards the highest concentration of food molecules, or...
.
As chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of California at Berkeley he reorganized the department, streamlining it along modern lines into three departments, of cell and molecular biology, integrative biology and the biology of microbes and plants.
On a personal note, Koshland wrote in an autobiographical article that he decided to become a scientist in the eighth grade after reading two popular books about science, Microbe Hunters by Paul DeKruif and Arrowsmith by
Sinclair LewisHarry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works...
.