Daniel Koshland Jr

Just heard that Donald Koshland, a biochemist at UC Berkeley, passed away earlier this week at age 87. The former editor of Science magazine, Koshland was an expert in enzymes and an early supporter of genetic engineering. I had the opportunity to hear one of Dr. Koshland’s last lectures at Berkeley, and he struck me as a great teacher and innovative thinker (indeed, that lecture inspired a forthcoming feature in Wired magazine). Addressing a room full of usually inattentive undergraduates, Koshland was engaging, insightful, and enthusiastic; at lecture’s end, he had a crowd of students around the podium asking him more questions (including me).

Here’s a fine obituary from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Published by: tgoetz on July 26th, 2007 | Filed under Misc.




2 Responses to “Daniel Koshland Jr”

  1. David Hamilton Says:
    August 8th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

    It was actually Daniel Koshland Jr. who just passed away, not “Donald” Koshland. He was a cantankerous old coot, no question about it — I worked at Science when he was editor-in-chief, and his insistence on trying to run the DC-based journal from his Berkeley lab was a chronic source of friction among the magazine’s scientific editors — but he was unquestionably an engaging speaker and a terrific scientist.

  2. tgoetz Says:
    August 8th, 2007 at 8:57 pm

    My apologies for the mistake. I’ve fixed it now.

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