In Remembrance: Norton B. Gilula (1944-2000)

Bernie Gilula died on September 27, at the age of 55, after a year-long struggle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. To me, he was not only a much admired colleague, esteemed scientist, broad-ranging intellectual, and visionary educator; for many years, he was my dear friend. Dedicated, complicated, compassionate, humorous, brilliant, and gracious, there have been many Gilulas and we will miss them all in a profound way for years to come.W. H. Auden said the following on the death of T. S. Eliot, “To me the proof of a man's goodness is the effect he has upon others.” That sentiment sums up the essence of Bernie in my mind. He was always more concerned about your well being than his own, making sure that your needs were attended to, your issues were aired, your problems were solved. Until his last days, he was fully engaged in the scientific enterprise, often coming into the lab or the office straight from a chemotherapy treatment at the hospital. One of the things I most admired about Bernie was his unwavering resolve to keep doing what he loved best: helping people, mentoring students, and solving scientific problems.Bernie was a well known and highly regarded cell biologist with a multifaceted professional career. In March, 2000, he was appointed Vice President of Scientific Affairs at TSRI, in addition to maintaining a vibrant laboratory and leadership of the Graduate Studies Program. I recruited Bernie to the staff of the Institute in 1986; in 1988, he was named Dean of Graduate Studies—a program that was in every sense his vision, his dream and his accomplishment—and in 1991, he was appointed Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology. I felt strongly at the time that his unique combination of skills, breadth of scientific understanding, and ability to inspire and motivate students and colleagues made him the perfect candidate for the job. In addition to these demanding responsibilities, he maintained his editorship of the Journal of Cell Biology, which he attended to with great dedication and commitment, as well as finding the time to vanquish me on the golf course on a frequent and continuing basis.Not only possessed of superior intellect, Bernie was a talented athlete, and in 1962 he entered Southern Illinois University on a football scholarship. After receiving a Bachelor's degree in physiology and chemistry, he went on to earn a Master's degree in physiology at SIU. In 1968, he entered the PhD program in physiology at The University of California, Berkeley. While there, he was introduced to the field of cell biology, in which he spent his entire scientific career.A postdoctoral fellowship followed at Harvard University, where he did seminal work on gap junctions with Daniel Goodenough. In 1972, he moved to New York City to pursue postdoctoral studies at The Rockefeller University. A year later, he was appointed an Assistant Professor and later became an Associate Professor, a position he held until 1981. That year, he moved to Houston to accept an appointment as a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Baylor College of Medicine.Five years later, Bernie and his family moved to La Jolla, not only to continue his prolific scientific career at TSRI, but to assume important leadership positions that would leave an indelible mark on the quality and character of the Institute. His voracious appetite for knowledge and discovery, his keen and discerning eye for good science, and his overarching desire to teach and mentor enabled him to develop a superb cadre of young scientists who formed the core of the new Department of Cell Biology.As a PhD student at U. C. Berkeley, he studied invertebrate gap junctions with Peter Satir, Dan Branton, and Daniel Mazia, and realized their importance in providing a pathway for the transfer of information between cells. Using cell biological and genetic methods, one of his early fundamental contributions was to demonstrate that the gap junction provides the pathway for cell-to-cell communication of molecular information in the form of inorganic ions and metabolites. Subsequently, using a coculture system, he and his colleagues extended these studies to demonstrate that gap junctional communication can be used to transmit biologically important molecules, such as cyclic nucleotides, between cells.In parallel with these studies, using EM measurement of gap junctional communication, he and his colleagues demonstrated that the appearance of gap junctions was intimately related to the timing of important morphogenic events. In the early 1980's, Bernie continued his efforts on defining the role of gap junctions during development and differentiation. In experiments on Xenopus embryos and Hydra, antibody perturbation methods were applied to uniquely demonstrate that gap junctional communication makes an important contribution to patterning events during development. More recently, he and his colleagues used targeted gene disruption of a lens connexin to demonstrate the importance of gap junctional communication in maintaining lens transparency.Another area on which Bernie focused his research efforts was the relationship of the structure to the function of the gap junction. Bernie and his colleagues were among the first to identify and characterize the multigene family of proteins that form the gap junction structures in vivo and to demonstrate that the purified proteins can be reconstituted to form conducting channels. These studies ultimately allowed Bernie and his colleagues to resolve the structure of the gap junction channel at 7D and furthered our understanding of the oligomeric organization of the junction protein to form membrane channels.While his achievements were significant in so many areas of science, he was perhaps most proud of the role he played in establishing, shaping, and nurturing the Graduate Studies Program at TSRI. It is certainly no small task to create a new graduate program of quality, scope, and depth, and Bernie worked every day to ensure that each detail was attended to, and each good idea was thoroughly developed, improved, and implemented. Each student was special to him, and I know he derived enormous personal and professional pleasure from their accomplishments and personal triumphs. In recognition of his pivotal role in establishing and guiding the program, two perpetual graduate student fellowships have been established in his name, and the offices housing the graduate student program have been named the Norton B. Gilula Center for Graduate Studies.I marveled at Bernie's strength, decency, and integrity as a scientist, colleague, mentor, friend, and cancer patient. To the end he was hopeful, encouraged, and resilient. There were lessons in Bernie for all of us, but perhaps none greater than his zest for life and learning, and for showing the wonder of science to those around him. Bernie truly was a mensch, an enlightened gentleman.Figure 101Norton B. GilulaView Large Image | View Hi-Res Image | Download PowerPoint Slide