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AOCS Biotechnology Division
Newsletter February 2007

Obituary
by Tom McKeon

Professor Paul K. Stumpf passed away on Monday, February 12, 2007. Paul was considered by many to be a founder of the field of plant lipid research. He was the mentor to many researchers in the field of oilseed biochemistry; until his retirement, virtually everyone in the area of plant lipid biochemistry had come through his lab as a student, postdoc, or visiting professor. He was a visionary, foreseeing the impact of genetic engineering on plant research back in the 1970s, when gene cloning was still a decade in the future.

Paul received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Columbia University in 1945, in David Green's laboratory. He went on from there to become a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He moved 60 miles east to the University of California, Davis, where he founded the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and served four times as Department Chair. He and his colleague Eric Conn wrote the textbook Outlines of Biochemistry which was used worldwide, and possibly the best selling biochemistry text of all time. With additional co-authors, it is now in its 5th edition.

Dr. Stumpf served the American Society of Plant Physiologists as its president and chaired its board of trustees. He was recipient of many honors and awards, receiving the Supelco/Nicholas Pelick AOCS Research Award in 1974, the Stephen Hales Prize from ASPP and was awarded that organization's Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1978, and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences.

After Professor Stumpf became Emeritus at UC Davis, he took the helm of the Competitive Grant Program at USDA-CSREES, and helped develop it into the National Research Intitiative. In order to support education and research in the Department he founded, he and his wife Ruth endowed the Paul K. and Ruth R. Stumpf Professorship in Plant Biochemistry in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department at UC Davis.

Paul Stumpf was a mentor and a colleague to a number of us in the Biotech Division, and his passing is a great loss to all of us.

Other stories in this newsletter:

Biotechnology Division Events at the AOCS Annual Meeting

International Symposia on Biocatalysis and Biotechnology (ISBB)

Division Awards

New Board Members

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