Nobel Prize Linda B. Buck - Part I

June 14, 2010

Send to a friend | Printable Version

Linda B. Buck was born in 1947 in Seattle, Washington, a city surrounded by mountains, forests, and the sea.

Reading her autobiography it is evident she had a loving family and a happy childhood.

She says she was the second of three children, all girls. Her mother taught her to appreciate music and beauty, she was a sweet and wise homemaker who loved word puzzles, which now Linda also enjoys in her profession; she adores solving puzzles. Her father was an electrical engineer who, at home, spent much of his time inventing and building things and under his guidance she learned how to use power tools and how to build things, which she enjoyed so much.

She remembers her life was relatively unstructured and she was given considerable independence, which prepared her to think independently. She says she feels grateful because her parents always told her that she had the ability to do anything she wanted with her life, urging her to do it worth living, "not settling for something mediocre", at her mother's words.

To receive her undergraduate education she entered the &#&University of Washington&#& which was close to her house, and she received her B.S. in psychology and microbiology in 1975. By that time she was not sure about which was the best career for her, and she finally found it when she took a course in immunology, which she found fascinating and after which she decided to be a biologist.

She began &#&graduate school&#& in 1975; it was in the Microbiology Department at the University Of Texas Medical Center in Dallas. She considers that in this institution was where she truly learned to be a scientist, and where she obtained her Ph.D. in immunology in 1980.

In 1980, she moved to Columbia University in New York City to do postdoctoral work in immunology with Benvenuto Pernis. Later, she realized she needed to learn the recently developed techniques of molecular biology, and to do so, she moved to the laboratory of Richard Axel at Columbia University.

It was a period during which she learned a lot of molecular biology from Richard Axel and other members of his lab, as Eric Kandel, whom she also got to know and who has continued to be a wonderful source of inspiration and encouragement for her over the years.