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Dr. Daniel Koshland, RIP
By Todd Seavey
ACSH was saddened to hear of the death, earlier this week at age eighty-seven after a stroke, of Dr. Daniel Koshland. Beyond being a colleague of and donor to ACSH, Koshland was a veteran of the Manhattan Project, of enzyme and early biotech research at Brookhaven and Berkeley, and of the journal Science, where he was the editor in chief from 1985 to 1995. At Berkeley, he oversaw the reorganization and streamlining of the biology department, and his model of departmental structure -- and the portion he inherited and distributed of the Levi Strauss fortune -- influenced many other scientific institutions. His first wife, Marian, also a scientist, passed away in 1997 from lung cancer. His second wife, Yvonne, who had met him when they were undergrads studying bacteriology at Berkeley in 1940, married him in 2000 -- another reminder that Koshland's life was full throughout of new beginnings built upon old associations (in addition to Yvonne, his survivors include two sons and three daughters).
Koshland was known for creative changes of direction, such as moving from the study of bacteria behavior to the study of bacteria as a potential alternative fuel source. Nine years ago, he received the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science, capping a lifetime of awards and honors.
ACSH Trustee Dr. Henry Miller recalls that Koshland's willingness to change course intellectually manifested itself in a shift during the latter's years writing for Science: initially Koshland called for increased funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, but he ended his pleas after Miller, then an FDA official, explained to him how nonsensical and wasteful much of government science spending actually is. Miller also recalls Koshland publishing a piece of his in Science that was critical of biotech regulations, despite pressure from then-Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Charles Hess to pull the piece.
As noted in an article on HealthFactsAndFears last year, Koshland had been brave enough, fifteen years earlier, to denounce the scare over supposed carcinogenic effects from Alar despite the media's hyping of the story, and he cautioned in a Science editorial about it that "The ultimate decider in all controversial matters must be the data in a well-run experiment." ACSH agrees, and we will miss this multi-talented scientist, communicator of science, media critic, and friend. His influence will not soon fade.
Todd Seavey is Director of Publications at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org) and editor of HealthFactsAndFears.com.
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