George E. Palade, M.D.

In Memoriam: 1912-2008

 

ASCB Founder, past president, and longtime member George E. Palade passed away quietly at home on October 8, 2008, at the age of 95, after a long illness. Palade received his M.D. from the School of Medicine of the University of Bucharest, Romania. He was a member of the faculty of that school until 1945, when he came to the United States for postdoctoral studies. Palade joined Albert Claude at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1946 and was appointed Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller in 1948. He progressed from Assistant Professor to full Professor and head of the Laboratory of Cell Biology until 1973, when he moved to Yale as Professor to establish the Section of Cell Biology.

 

He wrote that his move to Yale was driven by “… my belief that the time had come for fruitful interactions between the new discipline of Cell Biology and the traditional fields of interest of medical schools, namely Pathology and Clinical Medicine.” Palade held the Sterling Professorship of Cell Biology from 1975 to 1983 when the Section, upon his retirement as Chair, became the Department of Cell Biology. That same year he was named Senior Research Scientist, Professor Emeritus of Cell Biology, and Special Advisor to the Dean. In 1990, Palade moved from Yale to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Once again he welcomed a new challenge and began an entirely new career as Professor of Medicine in Residence and Dean for Scientific Affairs in the School of Medicine. He started the new department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and transformed the development of basic sciences at UCSD.

 

Defining Cell Biology

Palade’s scientific contributions, which spanned nearly 50 years, led to a fundamental understanding of the structure and function of cells and defined the new field of cell biology. They opened novel areas of research which countless scientists in diverse fields now explore. Reminiscing about the early days at the Rockefeller when the field of cell biology was conceived, Palade wrote, “After so many years, it is difficult to recapture in words the atmosphere of intense activity, remarkable achievements, great excitement, and unlimited optimism that prevailed in the laboratory, which otherwise looked like an unattractive dungeon sunk in the third basement of one of the old buildings of the Rockefeller Institute.”

“The new field had virtually no tradition; everybody working in it came from some other province in natural sciences,” explained. “…. Added to all this excitement was a pervading free spirit–often irreverent but always helpful, because it acted as an antidote against imagined grandeur. Keith Porter was responsible for a good part of that spirit.…” Fortunately, that spirit still exists in our field.

Palade, along with Porter and others at the Rockefeller, was a founder of the American Society for Cell Biology in 1961, when 840 members gathered at its first meeting in Chicago. The ASCB has grown to a membership of approximately 10,000, indicative of current activity in this field. Palade was president of the ASCB in 1976. He was active in establishing the Journal of Cell Biology in 1955 (originally the Journal of Biochemical and Biophysical Cytology) as well as the Annual Reviews of Cell Biology in 1985. Palade was also influential as a member of the Advisory Panel to the Director of the NIH in ensuring that support for the basic sciences was recognized.

Making Dreams Reality