Professor Emerita Mary-Lou Pardue, an influential college member within the MIT Division of Biology, died on June 1. She was 90.
Early in her profession, Pardue developed a method referred to as in situ hybridization along with her PhD advisor, Joseph Gall, which permits researchers to localize genes on chromosomes. This led to many discoveries, together with vital developments in developmental biology, our understanding of embryonic growth, and the construction of chromosomes. She additionally studied the remarkably complicated method organisms reply to stress, akin to warmth shock, and found how telomeres, the ends of chromosomes, in fruit flies differ from these of different eukaryotic organisms throughout cell division.
“The rationale she was a professor at MIT, and why she was doing analysis, was initially as a result of she needed to reply questions and make discoveries,” says longtime colleague and Professor Emerita Terry Orr-Weaver. “She had her toes cemented in a love of biology.”
In 1983, Pardue was the primary lady within the Faculty of Science at MIT to be inducted into the Nationwide Academy of Sciences. She chaired the Part of Genetics from 1991 to 1994 and served as a council member from 1995 to 1998. Amongst different honors, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the place she served as a council member, and a fellow of the American Affiliation for the Development of Science. She additionally served on quite a few editorial boards and assessment panels, and because the vp, president, and chair of the Genetics Society of America and president of the American Society for Cell Biology.
Within the Nineties, Pardue was additionally considered one of 16 senior girls on MIT’s science college who co-signed a letter to the dean of science claiming bias towards girls scientists on the Institute on the time. On account of this letter and a subsequent examine of circumstances for girls on the Institute, MIT in 1999 publicly admitted to having discriminated towards its feminine college, and made plans to rectify the issue — a course of that finally served as a mannequin for tutorial establishments across the nation.
Her graduate college students and postdocs included Alan Spradling, Matthew Scott, Tom Cech, Paul Lasko, and Joan Ruderman.
Within the minority
Pardue was born on Sept. 15, 1933, in Lexington, Kentucky. She obtained a BS in biology from the School of William and Mary in 1955, and he or she earned an MS in radiation biology from the College of Tennessee in 1959. In 1970, she obtained a PhD in biology for her work with Gall at Yale College.
Pardue’s profession was inextricably linked to the slowly rising variety of girls with superior levels in science. Throughout her early years as a graduate pupil at Yale, there have been a couple of girls with PhDs — however none held college positions. Certainly, Pardue assumed she would spend her profession as a senior scientist working in another person’s lab, slightly than operating her personal.
Pardue was an avid hiker and beloved to journey and spend time outdoor. She scaled peaks from the White Mountains to the Himalayas and pursued postdoctoral work in Europe on the College of Edinburgh. She was delighted to obtain invites to offer college search seminars for the chance to journey to establishments throughout the US — together with an invite to go to MIT.
MIT had initially rejected her job utility, though the division rapidly realized it had erred in lacking the chance to recruit the proficient Pardue. In the long run, she spent greater than 30 years as a professor in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When Pardue joined, the biology division had two feminine college members, Lisa Steiner and Annamaria Torriani-Gorini — extra girls than at some other tutorial establishment Pardue had interviewed. Pardue turned an affiliate professor of biology in 1972, a professor in 1980, and the Boris Magasanik Professor of Biology in 1995.
“The one who made a distinction”
Pardue was recognized for her rigorous method to science in addition to her shiny smile and help of others.
When Graham Walker, the American Most cancers Society and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) professor, joined the division in 1976, he recalled an occasion for assembly graduate college students at which he was repeatedly mistaken for a graduate pupil himself. Pardue parked herself by his facet to bear the duty of introducing the most recent college member.
“Mary-Lou had an artwork for caring for individuals,” Walker says. “She was a beautiful colleague and an in depth pal.”
As a younger college member, Troy Littleton — now a professor of biology, the Menicon Professor of Neuroscience, and investigator on the Picower Institute for Studying and Reminiscence — had his first expertise educating with Pardue for an undergraduate challenge lab course.
“Observing how Mary-Lou was in a position to get the scholars enthusiastic about primary analysis was instrumental in shaping my educating expertise,” Littleton says. “Her ardour for discovery was infectious, and the scholars beloved engaged on primary analysis questions below her steering.”
She was additionally a mentor for fellow girls becoming a member of the division, together with E.C. Whitehead Professor of Biology and HHMI investigator Tania A. Baker, who joined the division in 1992, and Orr-Weaver, the primary feminine college member to hitch the Whitehead Institute in 1987.
“She was severely revered as a lady scientist — as a scientist,” remembers Nancy Hopkins, the Amgen Professor of Biology Emerita. “For girls of our technology, there have been no function fashions forward of us, and so to see that someone may do it, and have that type of respect, was actually inspiring.”
Hopkins first encountered Pardue’s work on in situ hybridization as a graduate pupil. Though it wasn’t Hopkins’s discipline, she remembers being struck by the implications — a leap in science that at the moment could possibly be in comparison with the discoveries which might be potential due to the functions of gene-editing CRISPR know-how.
“The questions have been very huge, however the know-how was small,” Hopkins says. “That you may truly do these sorts of issues was type of a miracle.”
Pardue was the one who referred to as to offer Hopkins the information that she had been elected to the Nationwide Academy of Sciences. They hadn’t labored collectively to that time, however Hopkins felt like Pardue had been looking for her, and was very excited on her behalf.
Later, although, Hopkins was initially hesitant to achieve out to Pardue to debate the discrimination Hopkins had skilled as a school member at MIT; Pardue appeared so profitable that certainly her gender had not held her again. Hopkins discovered that girls, normally, didn’t focus on the methods they’d been undervalued; it was humiliating to confess to being handled unfairly.
Hopkins drafted a letter in regards to the systemic and invisible discrimination she had skilled — however Hopkins, ever the scientist, wanted a reviewer.
At a desk within the nook of Rebecca’s Café, a now-defunct eatery, Pardue learn the letter — and declared she’d prefer to signal it and take it to the dean of the Faculty of Science.
“I knew the world had modified in that prompt,” Hopkins says. “She’s the one who made the distinction. She modified my life, and adjusted, in the long run, MIT.”
MIT and the standing of girls
It was solely when a number of the tenured girls college of the Faculty of Science all got here collectively that they found their experiences have been comparable. Hopkins, Pardue, Orr-Weaver, Steiner, Susan Carey, Sylvia Ceyer, Sallie “Penny” Chisholm, Suzanne Corkin, Mildred Dresselhaus, Ann Graybiel, Ruth Lehmann, Marcia McNutt, Molly Potter, Paula Malanotte-Rizzoli, Leigh Royden, and Joanne Stubbe finally signed a letter to Robert Birgeneau, then the dean of science.
Their efforts led to a Committee on the Standing of Ladies School in 1995, the report for which was made public in 1999. The report documented pervasive bias towards girls throughout the Faculty of Science. In response, MIT finally labored to enhance the working circumstances of girls scientists throughout the Institute. These efforts reverberated at tutorial establishments throughout the nation.
Walker notes that creating actual change requires a monumental effort of political and societal strain — but it surely additionally requires excellent people whose work surpasses the limitations holding them again.
“When Mary-Lou got here to MIT, there weren’t many cracks within the glass ceiling,” he says. “I believe she, in some ways, was a pacesetter in serving to to vary the standing of girls in science by simply being who she was.”
Later years
Kerry Kelley, now a analysis laboratory operations supervisor within the Yilmaz Lab on the Koch Institute for Integrative Most cancers Analysis, joined Pardue as a technical lab assistant in 2008, Kelley’s first job at MIT. Pardue, all through her profession, was dedicated to hands-on work, making ready her personal slides at any time when potential.
“One of many largest issues I realized from her was errors aren’t at all times errors. In the event you do an experiment, and it doesn’t prove the best way you had hoped, there’s one thing there that you would be able to be taught from,” Kelley says. She remembers a frequent chorus with a smile: “‘It’s analysis. What do you do? Re-search.’”
Their birthdays have been on consecutive days in September; Pardue would mark the event for each at Authorized Seafoods in Kendall Sq. with bluefish, white wine, and lab members and collaborators together with Kelley, Karen Traverse, and the late Paul Gregory DeBaryshe.
Within the years earlier than her demise, Pardue resided at Youville Home Assisted Residing in Cambridge, the place Kelley would usually go to.
“I used to be unhappy to listen to of the passing of Mary-Lou, whose seminal work expanded our understanding of chromosome construction and mobile responses to environmental stresses over greater than three many years at MIT. Mary-Lou was an distinctive one who was referred to as a gracious mentor and a valued instructor and colleague,” says Amy Keating, head of the Division of Biology, the Jay A. Stein (1968) Professor of Biology, and professor of organic engineering. “She was type to everybody, and he or she is missed by our college and employees. Ladies at MIT and past, together with me, owe an enormous debt to Mary-Lou, Nancy Hopkins, and their colleagues who so profoundly superior alternatives for girls in science.”
She is survived by a niece and nephew, Sarah Gibson and Todd Pardue.
