Robert G. Shulman

Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Professor of Chemistry

Bob Shulman, A.B., Columbia University, Ph.D., Columbia University, faculty member at Yale since 1979. After a long and distinguished career in industry and Bell Labs, you have served 23 years on the Yale faculty. You have examined in great detail such essential molecules as hemoglobin. You have probed many aspects of how the cell builds up, breaks down and rearranges molecules, working first with the humble, but nonetheless complex, bacterium E. Coli, then with small animals such as the rat, and eventually with Homo sapiens. But perhaps your most extensive research has been with nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR, both as a spectroscopic tool and in the MRI scan that many of us are familiar with from personal experience. It was your brilliance in this area, as well as your vision and energy that resulted in the construction and operation of the Magnetic Resonance Center, which you directed for many years. 

Much of your recent research has focused on the human brain, and has included groundbreaking studies with neurobiologsts and psychiatrists on its function. Your interest in such collaboration has been exemplified by your participation in the Whiney Humanities Center, where you have worked to unite “the two cultures” especially by teaching a cross-listed undergraduate course on that subject. In the Department of MB&B, you have taught undergraduate students, graduate students and medical students with distinction. Membership in the National Academy of Sciences is only one of the many honors bestowed on you. With unusual breadth and personal lean, you have served Yale well and as you retire your Yale colleagues on the Hill, central campus and at the School of Medicine applaud you.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans