Roger Yate Stanier | |
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| Born | October 22, 1916 (1916-10-22) Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | January 29, 1982 (1982-01-30) (aged 65) |
| Alma mater | Victoria College University of British Columbia University of California, Los Angeles Stanford University |
| Known for | Cyanobacteria |
| Awards | Eli Lilly and Company-Elanco Research Award (1950) Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology (1980) Leeuwenhoek Medal (1981) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Microbiology |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley Institut Pasteur |
| Doctoral advisor | C. B. van Niel |
| Signature | |
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Roger Yate Stanier (22 October 1916 – 29 January 1982) was a Canadianmicrobiologist who was influential in the development of modernmicrobiology.[1] As a member of the Delft School and former student ofC. B. van Niel, he made important contributions to thetaxonomy of bacteria, including the classification ofblue-green algae ascyanobacteria.[2] In 1957, he and co-authors wroteThe Microbial World, an influential microbiology textbook which was published in five editions over three decades.[3] In the course of 24 years at theUniversity of California, Berkeley he reached the rank of professor and served as chair of the Department of Bacteriology before leaving for thePasteur Institute in 1971.[4] He received several awards over the course of his career, including theLeeuwenhoek Medal. He was a Fellow of theRoyal Society and a Foreign Associate of theNational Academy of Sciences and theLégion d’Honneur.[1]
Roger Yate Stanier was born to Britishimmigrant parents on 22 October 1916 inVictoria, British Columbia, Canada.[4] His father studiedmedicine at theUniversity of Toronto and later established aprivate practice indiagnostic radiology. His mother, a teacher, studiedEnglish literature at theUniversity of Cambridge.
His early education was at private boarding schools. Beginning at age 7 he attended St. Christopher's School inVictoria, British Columbia for two years, followed by what Stanier described as "five long and hellish years" atShawnigan Lake School.[5] His father removed him from Shawnigan after he contractedpneumonia, upon his recovery he attendedOak Bay High School until his graduation in 1931 at the age of 15.[5] He then enrolled at the local junior college,Victoria College, where he studied biology, literature, and history.[6] He subsequently transferred to theUniversity of British Columbia (UBC) with the intention to studyliterature andhistory. His parents demurred, however, so he settled onbacteriology in order to placate hisphysician father, ultimately graduating with first-class Honours inbacteriology in 1936.[5]
Because he felt he had had insufficient exposure to the physical sciences at UBC he sought chemistry training at theUniversity of Munich in 1936.[5] The rise ofNazism had poisoned the environment at the university, so he cut short his studies there and decided to attend graduate school in the United States.[6]
On account of the presence of his friend,Mike Lerner, he chose to enroll in the Department of Bacteriology of theUniversity of California, Berkeley, but he found himself uninterested by thephage research done under A.P. Krueger, and he subsequently accepted a teaching assistantship at theUniversity of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for the 1938–1939 term, his first paid employment.[5] During his time at UCLA, he attended the famous summer course taught byC. B. van Niel at theHopkins Marine Station inPacific Grove, California. His experience there drove his decision to pursue general microbiology. After receiving hisM.A. from UCLA in 1939 he returned to Pacific Grove as van Niel's student.[4]
After his graduation he worked withMarjory Stephenson at the University of Cambridge as aGuggenheim fellow beginning in 1945.
Upon his return to the United States he served a short appointment at theUniversity of Indiana.
In 1946-1947 we had at Indiana Roger Stanier, a marvelous teacher of bacterial biochemistry, a superb lecturer, and an arrogant uncompromising intellectual. Roger was fromBritish Columbia, but English in spirit, an though vocally anti-puritan, emotionally a knot of puritan revolts and inhibitions — a delightfully neurotic man. As in Dante’sInfernoFarinata was contemptuous of Hell, so did Roger hold all ofIndiana in contempt. From him I began to learn that biochemistry was not just chemistry, but biology. I learned about the power of an integrated view ofmetabolism and of the subtle interplay between organisms and their environment. Most important, I learned that bacteriology could be as much fun as genetics, if of a different kind of fun.[7]
In 1947 he accepted an invitation to join the Department of Bacteriology of theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he remained for most of his career.[4]
In 1971 he left Berkeley and moved toParis, where he worked at theInstitut Pasteur for the last decade of his life.[8] He described the reasons for his departure as both academic and political: academic disruptions amid the campus turmoil associated with theFree Speech Movement, then governorRonald Reagan's ouster ofUniversity of California presidentClark Kerr, and theelection of PresidentRichard Nixon.[5] Along with his wifeGermaine, he accepted the invitation ofÉlie Wollman to take over the former lab space ofFrançois Jacob andJacques Monod, with the stipulation that he be allowed to work oncyanobacteria exclusively.[5][9] He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in 1978.[10]
Stanier's research career included a diverse variety of research problems bound by a desire to synthesize the general and specific patterns observed in bacteria into a more unified understanding of biology as a whole.[11] Together withC. B. van Niel, Stanier was described byCarl Woese as one of the "only consistently insightful and articulate reporters of the early search for amicrobial phylogeny".[12] Stanier participated in Bergey's Manual Trust during its conception.[1] He invented the technique of simultaneous adaption for the analysis of metabolic pathways.[13]
Stanier's work onCyanobacteria focused on obligateautotrophy,fatty acid composition, structure ofphycobiliproteins andphycobilisomes,chromatic adaptation,nitrogen fixation, and their nutrition andtaxonomy.[11] He led the proposal to include cyanobacteria, which he called blue-green algae or cyanophytes, within the bacteria rather than consider the cyanobacteria as distinct from bacteria.[14][15]
Stanier also authored an influential textbook,The Microbial World.[1][3]The Microbial World played an important role in the promulgation of the concepts of "prokaryote" and "eukaryote" as negative definitions ofBacteria andArchea.[2][16]
