Boris Magasanik

Boris Magasanik begins the interview with a description of his childhood years in Vienna, Austria. Shortly after graduating from the Gymnasium in 1937, Magasanik immigrated to the United States to live with his sister in New York City. It was still possible for Jewish families to leave Austria, and both Magasanik and his parents left the country. He enrolled in City College of New York, where he earned a B.S. in biochemistry in 1941. Hearing of its good reputation for organic chemistry, Magasanik decided to attend graduate school at Pennsylvania State University. While at Penn State, Magasanik was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Second General Hospital. His unit was transferred to Oxford, England, where he remained until the spring of 1944. After his release from military service in 1945, Magasanik went back to New York and continued his graduate education at Columbia University, researching inositols and RNA with Erwin Chargaff. After his postdoctoral work, Magasanik went to Harvard University as the Ernst Fellow in 1949. After joining the faculty at Harvard, Magasanik and his students researched histidine and purine biosynthesis and inositol degradation. When he joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1960, Magasanik continued his work on inositol degradation, studying enzyme pathways. Later, Magasanik researched histidine degradation in Salmonella and Klebsiella. In 1967, Magasanik became head of the Department of Biology at MIT, serving in that capacity for ten years. During his years as chairman, Magasanik helped found the Center for Cancer Research. After his chairmanship, he remained active in the department, helping to establish the Whitehead Institute. Magasanik concludes the interview with a discussion of MIT's teaching environment, financial support for research projects, and continuing as an educator after retirement.

Columbia University

1948 - 1949 Research Assistant, Department of Biochemistry

Harvard University

1949 - 1951 Ernst Fellow, Bacteriology and Immunology

Harvard University

1951 - 1953 Associate

Harvard University

1951 - 1956 Markle Scholar

Harvard University

1953 - 1955 Assistant Professor

Harvard University

1955 - 1959 Associate Professor

Pasteur Institute, Paris

1959 - 1959 Guggenheim Fellow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1960 - 1977 Professor, Department of Microbiology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1967 - 1977 Head, Department of Microbiology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1977 - Present Jacques Monod Professor of Microbiology

Sondra Schlesinger

Sondra Schlesinger is professor of molecular microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in biological chemistry from the University of Michigan and spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Boris Magasanik at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked on enzyme induction and regulation in bacteria. She joined the faculty at Washington University in 1964, where initially she continued her research in the field of microbial genetics and physiology. In the early 1970s, she began her research work on the structure and replication of animal RNA viruses, which continues to this day. Dr. Schlesinger has over one hundred publications spanning these areas of microbiology. She was president of the American Society for Virology in 1992–1993, at which time she began her present interest and work in the history of virology.