Boris Magasanik was a microbiologist and biochemist who was the Jacques Monod Professor Emeritus of Microbiology in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
12 Facts About Boris Magasanik
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Boris Magasanik was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine on December 19,1919, to a family he later described as "belonging to the capitalist class" and who left for Vienna after Kharkiv was captured by Communist forces during the then-ongoing Ukrainian civil war.
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Boris Magasanik then emigrated to New York City, where his sister and her husband had moved a year prior, and there completed his studies at the City College of New York, from which he graduated in 1941.
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Boris Magasanik began graduate education at Pennsylvania State University, but was interrupted by the United States' entry into World War II.
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In 1960, Boris Magasanik was recruited from Harvard to MIT by noted microbiologist Salvador Luria, who sought to raise the MIT Department of Biology's profile in molecular biology.
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In 1967, Boris Magasanik became the head of the Department of Biology, a position in which he served until 1977.
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Boris Magasanik became the Jacques Monod Professor of Biology in 1977.
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In 1969, Magasanik became a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, from which he received the Selman A Waksman Award in Microbiology in 1993.
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Boris Magasanik was known as a skilled and committed educator of undergraduates, and in fact cited the opportunity to teach undergraduate courses as one reason for his move from Harvard Medical School to MIT.
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Boris Magasanik met his first wife, Adele Karp, when both were graduate students at Columbia; they were married in 1949.
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Boris Magasanik married Helen Donis-Keller, a scientist and artist, in 1996.
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On December 25,2013, Boris Magasanik died in Cambridge, Massachusetts at age 94.