Bush names Rutgers’ Witkin for nation’s highest science honor
Archived article from Nov 3, 2003
By Joseph Blumberg
President George W. Bush has named Evelyn M. Witkin, Barbara McClintock Professor Emerita, a recipient of the 2002 National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest science and engineering honor.
Witkin, a Princeton resident, is one of eight honorees selected and the 30th woman to receive the medal, which will be presented at a White House ceremony Nov. 6.
The National Medal of Science, established by the 86th Congress in 1959 and administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF), honors the impact of individuals on the present state of knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, engineering, social and behavioral sciences. Not including the 2002 recipients, the medal has been awarded to 409 distinguished scientists and engineers, including three previous Rutgers winners.
“I had no idea that anything like this was possible. I am very gratified by the award,” said Witkin. “That I was nominated by colleagues means a lot to me. Having been in the field of genetics since the mid-1940s was an enormous privilege and the most exciting experience that I could imagine having in professional life.”
Witkin has been a pioneer in the study of DNA mutagenesis and DNA repair, which focuses on how mutations, most of which are unhealthy, occur in DNA and how they may be corrected. This has become very important in the biochemical sciences and in cancer biology.
For more than 40 years, Witkin not only made seminal discoveries but also played a crucial role in defining and establishing the field of biological responses to DNA damage. Her work, which furthered understanding of the genetic response to harmful environmental factors such as radiation, has played an important role in the biochemical sciences and in clinical radiation therapy for cancer.
Witkin’s investigations into DNA repair led to her discovery of genes that can heighten bacterial resistance to DNA-damaging agents. In 1973, while on the faculty of Rutgers’ Douglass College, she defined the E. coli “SOS response,” a system that is triggered by DNA damage. This system activates at least 40 genes that promote DNA repair and enhance individual and population survival. We now know that humans and many other organisms use the same kinds of DNA repair mechanisms.
Witkin came to Douglass College in 1971 and taught in the department of biology for 12 years. She then spent eight years on the faculty of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology. Witkin retired in 1991 in order to pursue her study of poetry — a personal passion that rivaled her love of science, according to life sciences Dean Kenneth Breslauer.
Previous Rutgers recipients of the National Medal of Science are Felix E. Browder (1999), university professor of mathematics, Martin D. Kruskal (1993), the David Hilbert Professor of Applied Mathematics, and James L. Flanagan (1996), vice president for research and director of the Center for Advanced Information Processing.
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