Mary Osborn

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Mary Osborn and her husband Klaus Weber

Mary Osborn (born December 16, 1940 in Darlington ) is a British cell biologist . From 1989 to 2005 she was professor for cell biology at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen .

Live and act

She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College in Cheltenham and then studied mathematics and physics at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain . She completed this with a bachelor's degree in physics. Then she did her master's degree in biophysics at the Pennsylvania State University in the USA in 1963 with the thesis Segregation of DNA in "E. coli": observations by means of H 3-thymidine decay . There she received her doctorate in 1967 . Her doctoral thesis was entitled The determination and use of mutagen specificity in bacteria containing nonsense codons .

Osborn did research as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . There she also met the Nobel Prize winner James Watson . She held academic positions for three years in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge under Sydney Brenner and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, and in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ; she worked there for two and a half years.

In 1975 she and her husband, Klaus Weber , moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen; In 1989 she also became an honorary professor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Göttingen .

She retired in 2005 .

Research work

Osborn is especially for the so-called immunofluorescence - Microscopy known. In the 1970s, she and her husband succeeded in depicting the inner workings of cells in color. With the help of antibodies specially developed for this, they were able to make microtubules and intermediate filaments , building blocks of the cytoskeleton , visible. Osborn was able to show that the microtubules in the cell form structures through which intracellular transport takes place.

Weber and Osborn also succeeded in showing intermediate filaments in color, and they showed the arrangement and function of microtubules and intermediate filaments in hundreds of cells simultaneously. This method is used today by cell biologists all over the world.

Further research carried out by Osborn and Weber together with the Heidelberg cell biologist Werner Franke showed that cells receive a “fingerprint” through the intermediate filaments. The researchers were able to discover a total of five different main types of filament, which differ depending on the cell type. This discovery is particularly important for cancer diagnostics: when a body cell becomes a cancer cell , it retains the “fingerprint” of its original cell . Antibodies that can recognize these specific “fingerprints” can be used to diagnose cancer . This method is especially important for the ten to fifteen percent of tumors that are difficult to identify with conventional means. The pathologists Michael Altmannsberger, Alfred Schauer and Wen Domagala also played a major role in the development of these methods .

Weber and Osborn developed another method that is now world-famous: the so-called SDS gel electrophoresis . This procedure helps to reliably determine the size of protein subunits.

Science and research policy

Osborn is represented on many committees , specialist advisory boards and award committees and works in these to ensure that young researchers are better supported and that conditions for scientists improve. Since the beginning of the 1990s, she has also been of the opinion that top positions in science must be filled with more women. After criticizing it in several specialist journals , the European Union also became aware of this problem. Osborn headed an expert group that was set up at the request of the EU. This group reported to the EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin , compiled the first comparative figures and then published them in the so-called ETAN report. This report revealed how few women hold top positions in science and made specific suggestions on how to overcome this shortcoming. The EU then began to examine the participation of women scientists in EU funding programs. In addition, the proportion of women in several science policy bodies has been increased to over 20 percent. In addition, statistics are now being produced that are published every three years and reflect the current situation of female scientists.

Awards and memberships

Osborn has received many awards for her scientific work and commitment. These include the Meyenburg Prize for Cancer Research, which she was awarded in 1987, and the Carl Zeiss Prize, which she received in 1998. In 2002 she was awarded the UNESCO L'Oréal Prize for Women in Science. The University of Göttingen awarded her the Dorothea Schlözer Medal . In 1997 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin .

On March 6, 2014, she was by the Federal Education Minister Johanna Wanka , the Federal Cross of Merit awarded first class.

Osborn is an elected member of the Academia Europaea and the European Molecular Biology Organization .

Fonts (selection)

  • as editor with Klaus Weber : Cytoskeletal proteins in tumor diagnosis. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor NY 1989, ISBN 0-87969-325-8 .
  • with the European Commission and the Directorate-General for Research: Science Policy in the European Union. Promotion of outstanding academic achievements through gender mainstreaming. Report of the ETAN expert working group “Women and Science”. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg 2001, ISBN 92-828-8876-2 , ( digital version (PDF; 1 MB) ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fiona M. Watt : Mary Osborn. In: Journal of Cell Science. Vol. 117, No. 8, 2004, pp. 1285-1286, doi: 10.1242 / jcs.01099 .
  2. ^ Winner of the Meyenburg Prize - Meyenburg Foundation. In: meyenburg-stiftung.de. meyenburg-stiftung.de, accessed on January 3, 2016 .
  3. ^ L'Oréal / UNESCO Prize for Mary Osborn. In: innovation. The magazine from Carl Zeiss. German edition, No. 12, November 2002, ISSN  1431-8040 , pp. 40-41 .
  4. ↑ Mary Osborn receives the Federal Cross of Merit. In: mpg.de. mpibpc.mpg.de, accessed on January 3, 2016 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ In her dissertation The determination and use of mutagen specificity in bacteria containing nonsense codons on page 122.
  2. ↑ Both theses can be found here. Search criteria: Exact, "Osborn, Mary" and Author => Search
personal data
SURNAME Osborn, Mary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British cell biologist and professor at the University of Göttingen
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Darlington