Скачать или смотреть Gerald Fischbach - Rod MacKinnon's passions (75/75)

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Gerald Fischbach (b. 1938) is an American neuroscientist and pioneering researcher. He pioneered the use of nerve cell cultures to study the electrophysiology, morphology and biochemistry of developing nerve-muscle and inter-neuronal synapses. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2023]

TRANSCRIPT: I'm just realizing, when I mentioned Bruce Bean, I didn't say enough about Rod MacKinnon, who joined our department at Harvard, who went on to win a Nobel Prize for his work on potassium channel structure in biology at the level of x-ray analysis. Rod tells the story that he'll always be grateful to me because when he came to tell me at Harvard that he had this offer from Rockefeller, and I asked what was involved and he told me they were going to buy him his own electron microscope and his own x-ray diffraction machinery. I told him you ought to take the job. He said he couldn't believe that I told him that because I think everyone assumed that I'd try and convince him to stay.

But he was the most exciting, mercurial scientist I ever dealt with. When he was turned on, you just wanted to stay away from it. If you saw Rod coming down the hall with his hair out, his eyes glowing, you didn't want to talk to him because he'd start screaming. But he was just very committed and emotional and everybody at Harvard adored him and misses him. Bruce told me recently they're trying to recruit him back. I think that would be a mistake for Rod because he must be in this late 60s now, I think.

He went to medical school, did a residency, and then got very involved with a group at Brandeis in the biochemistry of ion channels, so he must be in his 70s. But he's very peaceful at Rockefeller and happy. I visited him at his home on Long Island. He's a fanatic about canoes, really, he and Bruce. When I walked into his house, he had things hanging from the living room ceiling, which was strength-building devices for rowing. Everything in his life was geared towards his canoes, kayaks. He and Bruce would seek out white sharks off the Cape and in Maine. Crazy, just crazy, but that was Rod.