Named Seminars

Dr. Irwin Fridovich was a biochemist and a familiar figure on the Duke campus for more than 60 years. He came to Duke as a graduate student in 1952, earning his PhD in biochemistry in 1955. He became an assistant professor in biochemistry at Duke University in 1961 and a full professor in 1971, was named James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry in 1976 and held the position as professor emeritus since 1996 until his death. 

Working with Joe McCord, Dr. Fridovich discovered the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD), which living cells use to defuse a reactive form of oxygen called superoxide, now more commonly referred to as oxygen free radicals. Their paper, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in November 1969, has been cited more than 9,300 times by other scientists and opened an entirely new field of medicine and biology devoted to oxygen free radicals. His laboratory went on to describe additional forms of the enzyme, including a new manganese-containing enzyme and an iron-containing superoxide dismutase from Escherichia coli. Over his career, he published approximately 400 scientific articles, and discovered superoxide dismutase, essentially founding the field of Free Radical Biology. 

To honor his scientific legacy, the Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the Irwin Fridovich Memorial Lecture each year, bringing a distinguished scientist to Duke to share their work with our faculty, trainees, and staff.

Dr. Tao-Shih Hsieh earned his B.S. in Chemistry from National Taiwan University in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. He joined Duke as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in 1981, became Professor of Biochemistry in 1993, and was named Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry in 2013. From 2009 to 2016, he also served as Director and Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. 

Dr. Hsieh made many contributions to the field of DNA topoisomerases and chromatin dynamics, and was the first to identify, purify and characterize eukaryotic type II DNA topoisomerase from Drosophila. He later studied additional topoisomerases in the same system, including work on topoisomerase IIIa in mitochondrial function and aging, as well as topoisomerase IIIb in genome stability. He was elected a Fellow of Academia Sinica in 2012 and a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences in 2013. 

The Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the annual Hsieh Memorial Lecture, funded by an endowment established in memory of Dr. Hsieh, who was known as a highly regarded mentor, teacher, and researcher.

Dr. Henry Kamin was a Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University whose career at Duke spanned 42 years. His work centered on nutritional biochemistry, and he was active in the study of flavins and flavoproteins, serving as editor of the Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Flavins and Flavoproteins, held in Durham, North Carolina and published in 1971.

His scientific standing was recognized by two five-year appointments to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, membership on the National Science Foundation Panel on Metabolic Biology, and the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the annual Henry Kamin Memorial Lecture, which honors his 42-year career at Duke University, his steadfast integrity, and his many contributions to nutritional biochemistry. His wife, Dottie Kamin, initiated the lecture to honor her husband using monies provided by the Henry and Dorothy Lingle Kamin Endowment Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation. 

Dr. Paul Modrich is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry. After earning his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University and holding a faculty position at UC Berkeley, he was recruited to the Department of Biochemistry at Duke in 1976. 

Starting on the question of DNA repair in the late 1970s, his key contribution has been the identification of the mismatch repair system, a proofreading mechanism that identifies and corrects errors that occur in the DNA code during chromosome replication. His work on the human pathway demonstrated that cancer cells characterized by microsatellite instability are defective in mismatch repair and resistant to the action of certain chemotherapeutic drugs. Inactivation of mismatch repair is the cause of the most common form of hereditary colon cancer. 

In 2015, Dr. Modrich was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

The Department of Biochemistry holds the annual Modrich Distinguished Lecture, which honors his exceptional career and many contributions he has made to the field of nucleic acid biochemistry. Dr. Modrich chooses and hosts a distinguished lecture each year.