Paul Forscher

Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Paul Forscher, BA, Colby College; PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; professor at Yale since 1989: You are a creative, award-winning cell biologist who stands among the world’s leading experts on how neuronal cells produce forces that enable them to grow and extend their connections to other cells and muscles.  

You were drawn into science by the intellectual challenge and excitement of designing instruments that could leverage novel experimental observations. As a graduate student, you investigated how neurotransmitters relay signals in nerve cells using quantitative, biophysical methods. During your postdoctoral work, you expanded your research interests to include studying how cells move, incorporating your quantitative training into this exploration.

Throughout your career, you have maintained an interest in signaling pathways and their role in mediating cellular processes in the developing nervous system. Your research has consistently demonstrated the importance of developing techniques to make precise measurements and using quantitative analysis to investigate the cell biology of neurons, as well as movement and force exertion within biological systems. Your pioneering use of high-resolution microscopy techniques to investigate questions in cell biology resulted in an important discovery that helped resolve a long-standing controversy in the field of cell motility, and you have continued to make numerous fundamental discoveries that have transformed that field.

In thirty-five years of teaching, you have been a strong advocate for the importance of basic science fundamentals—math, chemistry, and physics—and the disciplined powers of analytical thinking in shaping the development of neurobiological theory. In practice, this has involved teaching how current theory evolved historically from the experimental record. Your focus has always been on how real-world science is done—not from textbook learning, but from the research fundamentals that include asking a question, conducting background research, designing and conducting an experiment, analyzing the data, and only then drawing a conclusion. And there was always room in your classrooms for discussion of scientific concepts that were not in any textbook but occurred to students as they were learning.

You have been a strong advocate for freedom of speech and expression. Always championing the open exchange of information, you believe is essential to the scientific enterprise, you have been unafraid to hold to your own beliefs during moment in the academy of challenge and change.

In your email signature you proclaim that you are a “CBLF”—Carbon-Based Life Form. As you retire from active teaching and research, your colleagues thank you for your innovative intellect, modest and collaborative spirit, and willingness to stand up for what you believe. They are very grateful that your Carbon-Based Life Form has given so much to their department’s research and teaching for more than three decades.