โ Scribed by DR A. HASTINGS
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The papers in this volume honor the scienti"c legacy of Joel Keizer. Joel began his career as a theoretical chemist and ended up making a large impact in the "eld of theoretical biology, through his innovative work on calcium signaling and his organizational and mentoring skills. His untimely death in 1999 left the scienti"c world poorer, though he will live on through the strength of his contributions and the work of his many students and collaborators. Here only a brief overview of his most important contributions is possible.
Joel received a bachelor's degree from Reed College and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Oregon. His academic career was spent at the University of California, Davis, where he began in the Department of Chemistry, and "nished as a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior and as founding Director of the Institute for Theoretical Dynamics.
His early work focused on questions of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, establishing his reputation as an outstanding scholar by overturning some longstanding beliefs in the "eld. The culmination of this work was the book &&Statistical Thermodynamics of Nonequilibrium Processes'', published in 1987.
Joel then turned his considerable talents to problems in biology, beginning with a 1983 paper with T. Chay on membrane potential oscillations in the pancreatic -cell. This trend-setting paper proposed a new model for the internal dynamics of -cells, which was elaborated in many subsequent studies, such as his paper with Sherman and Rinzel in 1988. This work was part of a longstanding collaboration that was cemented during Joel's extended visit to the National Institutes of Health.
Joel's work on -cells led to other fundamental studies of the dynamics of calcium signaling, which occupied his attention throughout the rest of his life. In work with Smolen published in 1991 and 1992, Joel began to look at bursting activity and developed novel ways of describing calcium waves. During this period he worked on other problems as well, such as his in#uential work with Fox on the dynamics of #uctuations. His research was distinguished by an enviable combination of mathematical reasoning, clever numerical schemes, and careful attention to biological details.
At the time of his death, Joel was working on a textbook of mathematical biology.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
ary Medical Society by Boston University. Recently. he was also elected to membership in the Boston University Chapter of Alpha Omega Alpha. Two years of pathology residency at Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital were followed by internal medicine internship, residency, and fello