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Michael Menaker (May 19, 1934 – present) is a pioneer of research on circadian rhythmicity of vertebrae. Among his many groundbreaking discoveries, Menaker’s laboratory contributed to an understanding of light input pathways on extraretinal photoreceptors of non-mammalian vertebrates, discovered a mammalian mutation for circadian rhythmicity (tau mutation in golden hamsters), and located a circadian oscillator in the pineal gland of mammals. Menaker has taught several of today’s leading experts of chronobiology, and he has written more than 200 publications.

Early Life & Education
Michael Menaker grew up in the Manhattan borough of New York, New York. He lived across the street from Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History. As a child, he marveled at the dinosaur and snake exhibitions in the museum, and his parents, both clinical psychologists, fostered his intellectual interests from an early age. While his brother followed the path of his parents by pursuing a career in psychology, Menaker initially planned to attend medical school. During one summer, while on break from his undergraduate enrollment at Swarthmore College, he completed the traditionally required organic chemistry lecture and laboratory courses at University of California, Berkeley. Even though he successfully completed this course with the second highest grade in a class of 250 students, his professor helped him realize his passion for biology and challenged him to pursue a graduate degree rather than attend medical school. Menaker’s mother, herself the daughter of a chemistry researcher, was supportive of his decision to pursue biology further, and after he graduated from Swarthmore College in 1955 with a B.A. in biology, Menaker went on to Princeton University.

In Menaker’s first year at Princeton, he met several graduate students in the lab of Colin Pittendrigh, the renowned father of biological clocks, and they began introducing him to the field of chronobiology. Initially interested in developmental biology, Menaker immediately changed his mind during his second year as a graduate student upon meeting Pittendrigh. Menaker became a graduate student in the Pittendrigh lab and under his mentorship, Menaker studied the endogenous circadian rhythm of bats (Myotis lucifugus). Pittendrigh was an influential figure to Menaker, shaping his first exposure to the wonders of chronobiology. Menaker found Pittendrigh’s research perspective refreshing and unique, because he approached circadian rhythms with a strong background in evolutionary biology.

After Menaker graduated from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in 1960, he transitioned from studying circadian rhythms of bats to their hibernation patterns for his postdoctoral research in Donald Griffin’s lab at Harvard University, 1959-1962. Even though his focus was on hibernation, Menaker never steered far from his exploration of biological clocks. Menaker was a student during a major shift in the United States concerning financial support of scientific research – after 1957, when Russia launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1 during the Cold War, the U.S. allocated an unprecedented amount of funding into science. A recipient of the NIH, NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University from 1960-1962, Menaker tailored his research to fit his interests in bat hibernation and circadian rhythms.

Academic Career
Menaker’s research took a turn when he joined faculty at University of Texas, Austin in 1962. He moved away from using bats as a model of study because bats from Texas were potentially rabid at this time and their biology significantly deviated from the bats he had worked with in Massachusetts. Rather than repeating the same work he had previously done with bats in Massachusetts, Menaker soon transitioned to pursuing his interests in circadian rhythms through using the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and subsequently the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus). Menaker has a plethora of teaching experience through holding distinguished professor positions at University of Texas, University of Oregon, and presently, at University of Virginia.

Since 1987, Menaker has been the Commonwealth Professor of Biology at University of Virginia, Charlottesville. He previously served as the Chairman of the Biology Department, Univ. of Virginia from 1987-1993. His intellectual expertise extends outside of the classroom and laboratory through his administrative work in University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences and Biology Department. Menaker’s scientific breakthroughs have been met with skepticism, but his persistence in providing experimental evidence to counter initial criticism has been a hallmark of his success in the field of chronobiology. In the words of Menaker himself, “To overcome doubts, you do more experiments.” For example, after publishing his groundbreaking evidence for the ability of enucleated house sparrows to photoentrain, indicative of the existence of extraretinal photoreceptor(s), Menaker’s lab tediously worked to eliminate all ecto-parasites from house sparrows through difficult delousing techniques including the use of insecticides in response to criticism of a potential confounding variable with parasites.

Menaker has mentored several leading experts in the field of chronobiology, including Joseph Takahashi, Chair of the Neuroscience Department at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Heidi Hamm, Chair of the Pharmacology Department at Vanderbilt University; and Carl Johnson, Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He has authored more than 200 publications and maintained grant funding to support his research for over 60 years.

Current Work
Recently, Menaker accidentally stumbled upon another mutant hamster, this time showing a free-running period of 25 hours in conditions of constant darkness. Menaker’s graduate student, Ashley Moore, was a teaching assistant in his colleague’s animal behavior course when an undergraduate student insisted on trading in her hamster for one that had a period more closely resembling that of her classmates’ hamsters. Menaker bred this mutant hamster with three different females to produce litters with Mendalian ratios of wild-type and heterozygous mutants. He subsequently bred homozygous mutants with a free-running period of 28 hours. Menaker’s lab is currently in collaboration with Carla Green’s molecular biology lab at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to study this mutant hamster line further.

Awards and Honors
·     William Grieg Lapham Fellow, Princeton University, 1957-1958

·     National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, Princeton University, 1958-1959

·     NIH, NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard University, 1960-1962

·     Career Development Award, National Institutes of Health, 1970-1975

·     Guggenheim Fellowship, University of Montpellier, France, 1971-1972

·     Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, elected 1983

·     Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor, University of Bristol, UK, 1986

·     Commonwealth Professor of Biology, University of Virginia, 1987-present

·     Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1992

·     Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, elected 1999

·     Lifetime Achievement Award, American Society of Photobiology, 2002

·     Virginia’s Outstanding Scientists and Industrialists: Life Achievement in Science Award,2003

·     Peter C. Farrell Prize in Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine, 2007

·     University of Virginia Distinguished Scientist Award, 2009

·     University of Groningen Honorary Doctorate, 2009

·     Honma Life Science Foundation, Sapporo, Japan, Aschoff-Honma Prize, 2009