I’ve been a structural biologist all of my career. Mechanistic enzymology provided a natural trajectory, and recently has morphed into a broader interest in long-range allosteric communication and its role in catalysis. My interest in early molecular evolution has grown and blossomed into a small cottage industry, using what we call Urzymology (Ur = primitive, original + enzyme) to develop experimental models for long-extinct ancestral catalysts.

I graduated from Yale University with the Class of 1967, with whom I remain in close contact via our class listserve. I received my PhD in Biology in 1972 from UCSD for work with the crystallographer Joseph Kraut and spent a year in Cambridge, England with Aaron Klug at the Medical Research Council Lab of Molecular Biology. Sabbatical leaves in 1986-7 with Gérard Bricogne (LURE, Orsay; supported by an NIH Fogarty Fellowship and in 2010 with Marc Delarue (Institut Pasteur; supported by a Fulbright Fellowship)  greatly stimulated my more mathematical and computational interests complementary to my research interests in Chapel Hill. UNC Annual Leave Grants also supported both visits to France, where I have a secondary spiritual home.