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OBITUARIES
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Paul
Karl Stumpf
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Paul
Karl Stumpf
Former ASPP President
Paul Karl Stumpf died February 10, 2007, of inoperable prostate cancer
at his home, just 13 days before his 88th birthday. He had known of his
illness for several years but suffered little pain. His last few days
were spent sleeping, and his passing was peaceful, with his wife Ruth
and one of his daughters nearby.
Paul was born in New
York City on February 23, 1919, but never knew his father, Karl Stumpf,
a bass clarinetist with the Boston Symphony, who had died 2 months earlier.
In 1920, his mother, Annette Stumpf, took Paul and his older brother Felix
back to Blankenberg, Germany, to raise them near his father’s family
and escape the anti-German feelings still existing in the United States
after World War I. However, in 1923 she became discouraged with conditions
in Germany and returned to New York, where her sons started school. In
1930, she used an inheritance to purchase a small seaside resort hotel
near Bridgeton, Maine, where her sons attended the local high school with
a total enrollment of 126 students. Paul achieved high grades and in 1932
read Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters. This small book had
a great influence on him; he later attributed to it his decision to become
a research scientist in the biological sciences.
When Paul’s brother
was accepted to Harvard College for the fall of 1934, his mother, determined
to provide her sons with an excellent education, moved her family to Cambridge
and established a boarding house. Paul was enrolled in the Cambridge High
and Latin School, together with 4,000 other students. He survived his
first year, won a competitive science prize and medal in his second, spent
another year at the school, and then entered Harvard College in 1937 on
a full fellowship. As an honors student, Paul was required to do a research
project and decided to work with enzymes. The chair of biochemistry at
Harvard Medical School introduced him to a new arrival from England, David
E. Green, who assigned Paul to purify a new enzyme, potato starch phosphorylase.
His first paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, coauthored
with Green, appeared in April 1941 just before Paul received his AB cum
laude in June. When Green moved to Columbia University that fall, Paul
followed to pursue his PhD under Green. His thesis, “The Pyruvic
Dehydrogenase of Proteus Vulgaris,” was completed in 1945
and published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry with Paul
as sole author.
Eager to establish
his own career, Paul initially hoped to study enzymes involved in virus
growth and reproduction at the School of Public Health, University of
Michigan. He soon decided that such work would be difficult because of
the limited knowledge of viral biochemistry. Paul met and married Ruth
Rodenbeck in Ann Arbor during the 18 months he was at the University of
Michigan. In the fall of 1947, he accepted an appointment at the University
of California at Berkeley, as an assistant professor of plant nutrition,
and his initial studies were on glycolytic enzymes in plants. However,
his reading of James Bonner’s first edition of Plant Biochemistry
indicated that little was known about ß-oxidation of fatty acids
in plants, encouraging Paul to initiate research on lipid metabolism in
plants. After 10 years on the Berkeley campus, where he attained the rank
of professor in the Department of Agricultural Biochemistry, he transferred
to the Davis campus to establish a new Department of Biochemistry and
Biophysics. The department was warmly received, and Paul began an active
teaching and research program in 1959. He served on four occasions as
chair of that department.
Paul justifiably deserves
to be called the father of modern plant lipid biochemistry. In more than
250 publications, he and his coworkers discussed diverse topics ranging
from the initial steps in fatty acid biosynthesis to the assembly of membrane
and storage lipids to the degradation of lipids. His work has received
more than 7,500 citations and, 20 years after his retirement, is still
frequently cited. He is perhaps best known for his extensive characterization
of the systems for fatty acid biosynthesis in plants. These studies included
the identification of the many component enzymes, their subcellular localization,
and the discovery of the prokaryotic nature of enzymes of fatty acid synthesis
and of the chloroplast acetyl-CoA carboxylase. The discovery of acyl-ACP
thioesterases led to a description of CoA track versus ACP track reactions
that was a conceptual precursor to the prokaryotic and eukaryotic two-pathway
hypothesis that has underpinned much of modern plant lipid research. A
major early discovery was the pathway of alpha oxidation, described initially
in 1956 and in more detail in 1974. The system is now known to be involved
in plant pathogen responses, and the enzymes responsible have recently
been cloned. Paul’s discoveries in plants preceded the identification
of the pathway in animals and the later connection of adult Refsum’s
disease to the inability of humans to metabolize phytanic acid by alpha
oxidation.
Paul trained more than 60 students, postdocs, and visiting scientists,
many of whom went on to become leaders in plant biochemistry research.
Throughout his career, he maintained a close connection with bench work.
He trained every new arrival in the lab on the use of the gas chromatographs
and their radioisotope detectors, and when an instrument needed maintenance,
Paul provided hands-on repairs. He was also creatively engaged in each
research project, making many suggestions for experiments while allowing
students and postdocs the freedom to follow their own intuition. Many
of those who trained with Paul have fond memories of the atmosphere in
the Stumpf lab as an excellent place to do science and of the relaxed
social interactions that included trips to the Stumpf cabin near Lake
Tahoe.
In addition to his
fundamental research contributions, results from the Stumpf lab laid the
foundation for the genetic modification of oilseeds to improve their fatty
acid composition. Paul was a key early adviser and consultant for Calgene,
the successful biotech company founded in Davis. Much of the early success
of Calgene in transgenic modification of the fatty acid composition of
canola rested on the groundbreaking characterization and purification
of acyl-ACP desaturases and thioesterases that were carried out in Paul’s
lab.
Paul made full use
of the sabbatical leave policy of the University of California. His first
leave was spent with Bernard Horecker’s group at the National Institutes
of Health (NIH), where he used fluorescence to identify a long-chain aldehyde
as a product of alpha oxidation of long-chain fatty acids. Later sabbaticals
were in London, with A. T. James; in Copenhagen, with D. von Wettstein;
in Cologne, with W. Stoffel; and in Canberra, with K. Boardman, and these
leaves were similarly productive. He appreciated that such leaves gave
him a break in his teaching and administrative duties at Davis and opportunities
to renew his research skills. His family always accompanied him because
he felt it was good for his children to experience new environments and
learn to adapt to new friends and schools.
During his career,
Paul coauthored, with John B. Neilands, two editions of Outlines of
Enzyme Chemistry and, with Eric Conn, five editions of the popular
Outlines of Biochemistry. He also was coeditor-in-chief with Conn
of the 16-volume treatise Biochemistry of Plants. He authored numerous
chapters in symposia volumes and served in an editorial capacity on several
scientific journals. He served on the program advisory committee of the
Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia from 1982 to 1991, as well as
on the scientific advisory boards of Calgene and the University of Maryland
Biotechnology Center. He also served on numerous review and advisory panels
for NIH, the National Science Foundation, and USDA.
Paul was elected a
member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1978 and the Royal Danish
Academy of Sciences in 1975. He received the Stephen Hales Prize from
the American Society of Plant Physiologists in 1974, served as its president
in 1980, and chaired its Board of Trustees from 1986 to 1990. In 1992
he was awarded the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership by the society.
Other awards were the Lipid Chemistry Prize from the American Oil Chemists
Society, a Senior Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
of Germany, and two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships (1962 and 1969).
In 1994 Paul was elected a fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
After Paul became
professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, he took the
helm of the Competitive Grant Program at USDA–CSREES from 1988 to
1991 and helped develop it into the National Research Initiative. In 1999,
to support education and research in the department he had founded, he
and his wife Ruth endowed the Paul K. and Ruth R. Stumpf Professorship
in Plant Biochemistry in the Section of Molecular and Cellular Biology
at the University of California, Davis.
Twenty-two years of
retirement permitted the Stumpfs to enjoy numerous trips around the world.
They loved to travel and participated in about 50 Elderhostel programs,
including one to Antarctica. Golf bags were frequently packed on these
trips, because Paul had what one daughter described as a “hate–love”
relationship with that sport.
Paul Stumpf is survived
by his wife Ruth and five children and their spouses—Ann Shaw (Michael),
Kathryn Fruh (Bill), Margaret Noonan (Mark), David Stumpf (Susan), and
Richard Stumpf (Patrice)—as well as 11 grandchildren and one great
grandson. T
Eric Conn
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Davis
John Ohlrogge
Michigan State University
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