John Heuser

John E. Heuser (born August 29, 1942 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania ) is an American cell biologist and biophysicist . He is a professor at the Medical Faculty of Washington University in St. Louis and at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Kyoto .

Image of the smallpox virus from Heuser

He is known for developing a rapid freezing process for specimens in electron microscopy , followed by vapor deposition of a platinum layer (freeze etch electron microscopy). He studied with it z. B. muscle contraction, propagation of nerve impulses and invasion of cells by viruses. From 1975 to 1998 he was an instructor in the summer courses in neurobiology at Woods Hole .

Heuser studied at Harvard Medical School with his doctorate in 1969 (MD, magna cum laude ). He was there in the electron microscopy laboratory of J. David Robertson. As a post-doctoral student he was with Bernard Katz and Ricardo Miledi at University College London . In 1974 he became an assistant professor and later professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco . From 1980 he was Professor of Biophysics at the Washington University School of Medicine.

In 2014 he received the EB Wilson Medal and in 1980 he gave the W. Alden Spencer Lecture , in 1985 the Keith R. Porter Lecture . He became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 .

Web links

• Website of his laboratory