Francisco Bezanilla

Francisco Bezanilla is a Chilean-American scientist and professor at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biography

Bezanilla earned an undergraduate biology degree as well as master's and Ph.D. degrees in biophysics, all from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.[1] Initially intending to earn a medical degree, Bezanilla shifted his focus to research and the Ph.D. program, finding that he liked how neurophysiology combined two of his interests, electronics and biology.[2] He conducted research on the nerve cells of Humboldt squid at the Montemar Institute of Marine Biology.[3]

Leaving Chile for the United States in 1969, Bezanilla completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Institutes of Health. While in the US, Bezanilla heard that the Humboldt squid was no longer available in Chilean waters. Also noting the political changes in Chile under Augusto Pinochet, he decided to stay in the US. Working on gating current experiments, he became a frequent collaborator with Clay Armstrong, who he had met at Montemar.[2] In experiments at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Bezanilla and Armstrong built their own signal averaging device and became the first to measure the tiny gating currents in sodium channels.[2]

In 1977, Bezanilla became a neuroscience professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and later joined the University of Chicago, becoming the Lillian Eichelberger Cannon Professor in the Department of Pediatrics.[1] Bezanilla was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.[4] He was the 2013-2014 president of the Biophysical Society.[5] Some of his recent work includes the application of light pulses to gold nanoparticles to activate neurons.[6]

Bezanilla's daughter Magdalena is a biologist and university professor.[7]

References

  1. 1 2 "Francisco Bezanilla". University of Chicago. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Mossman, K. (November 13, 2008). "Profile of Francisco Bezanilla". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (46): 17597–17599. doi:10.1073/pnas.0810116105. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
  3. ↑ Scully, Tony (August 20, 2008). "Neuroscience: The great squid hunt". Nature. 454 (7207): 934–936. doi:10.1038/454934a. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Francisco Bezanilla". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Past Officers". Biophysical Society. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
  6. ↑ Yonck, Richard (April 10, 2015). ""Optocapacitance" shines new light on the brain". Scientific American. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
  7. ↑ Nealy, Michelle (February 2, 2012). "Emerging Scholars: Cell Biology Pioneer – Magdalena Bezanilla". Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. Retrieved November 24, 2015.
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