13Roanoke College Magazine

In the first half of the 20th century, Roanoke College nurturedand trained three individuals who went on to exceedinglydistinguished science careers:Dr. VernonMountcastle ’38,Dr. Carl Gottschalk ’42 andDr. Theophilus Painter ’1908.“Drs. Mountcastle, Gottschalk, and Painter are exemplars in

taking what Roanoke offered and using it to change the worldthrough science,” Roanoke College President Michael Maxeysaid. “Each is a giant in his field.”

Dr. David Gring, Roanoke College president emeritus, saidas a biologist, he had come to know all three of these pillars ofscience through scientific literature.

They “serve as a daily reminder that science programs atRoanoke College stand on the shoulders of giants, inspiringcurrent and future generations of students,” Gring said.

VERNON BENJAMIN MOUNTCASTLEVernon Mountcastle entered Roanoke College in 1935, earn-

ing a baccalaureate degree in chemistry in three years.He entered Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1938, with

intentions of eventually specializing in neurosurgery. Mount-

castle held to this plan tenaciously even beyond his militaryservice during World War II. He had not considered medicalresearch as a vocation.

During World War II, Mountcastle served as physician-in-charge of an orthopedic ward at a field hospital in the AtlasMountains. He later served aboard several landing ship tanks(LSTs), including one that was part of the immense Alliedarmada anchored just off the Normandy coast the night of June5, 1944.

Upon returning from the war, Mountcastle went to DukeUniversity to seek a training appointment in neurosurgery. Hewas at the end of a long line of applicants, most of whom hadjust returned from the service. It was agreed that he would goback to Johns Hopkins for a one-year neuroscience researchfellowship and begin his surgery residency at Duke thefollowing year. But, fortunately for the field of neuroscience, hewould never return to Duke and would stay at Hopkins forthe rest of his celebrated career.

In the post-war era, the field of neuroscience held muchpromise. Researchers were beginning to probe the brain in ways

DEVOTED HIS CAREER TO NEUROSCIENCE

AND IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE

FATHERS OF THAT DISCIPLINE. HE IS

BEST KNOWN FOR HIS DISCOVERIES ON

HOW NERVE CELLS ARE ORGANIZED IN

THE HUMAN BRAIN AND DID SOME OF

THE EARLIEST WORK ON HOW THE BRAIN

RESPONDS TO SENSORY INFORMATION.

DID SOME OF THE EARLIEST WORK ON

HOW GENETIC MATERIAL, DNA, IS

ORGANIZED IN CELLS. HIS INNOVATIVE

RESEARCH ALLOWED HIM TO MAKE THE

FIRST MAPS OF FRUIT FLY GIANT CHRO-

MOSOMES, PROVIDING VISUAL EVIDENCE

OF THE LOCATION OF GENES ALONG THE

LENGTH OF THOSE CHROMOSOMES.

WAS A KIDNEY PHYSIOLOGIST WHOSE

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH HELPED US

UNDERSTAND HOW OUR KIDNEYS WORK

TO CONTROL THE STATUS OF BODY

FLUIDS AND HOW THEY IMPACT THE

FUNCTION OF OTHER PHYSIOLOGICAL

PROCESSES. HE ALSO WAS IMPORTANT

TO PUBLIC HEALTH, WORKING TO MAKE

DIALYSIS TREATMENT WIDELY

AVAILABLE TO INDIVIDUALS SUFFERING

FROM KIDNEY DISEASE.

DR. THEOPHILUS PAINTER 1908 DR. VERNON MOUNTCASTLE 1938 DR. CARL GOTTSCHALK 1942

ROANOKE COLLEGE ENJOYS A LONG, PROUD TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE IN SCIENCETHAT EXTENDS FROM THE LATTER PART OF THE 19TH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT.

S C I ENCE

G IANTS

B Y D R . D A R W I N D . J O R G E N S E N

15Roanoke College Magazine14 Roanoke College Magazine

never before imagined. Mountcastlewanted to know how the human brainworked, and he used monkeys as mod-els to investigate the brain’s function. Hewas primarily interested in a region ofthe cerebral cortex (the part of the brainwhere all of the high-level neural pro-cessing occurs) called the somatosen-sory cortex, which receives andprocesses information sent from nervecells that sense mechanical stimuli such

as touch and pressure.Mountcastle was among the pioneers

in recording activity from single braincells while stimulating sensory receptorsin the skin and other body regions, usingglass microelectrodes the size of humanhairs. He was also interested in how sin-gle brain cells responded to joint move-ment, helping us understand how weprocess and control limb movement. Herefined these experiments using what he

called the “waking” monkey preparation— probing sensory processing in thecerebral cortex of minimally-anesthetizedanimals, allowing him to peer inside an“aware,” human-like brain as it worked.

Mountcastle is most famous for hisdiscovery that the nerve cells in the cere-bral cortex are arranged in verticalcolumns, and that this arrangementdirectly relates to their collective func-tion in processing sensory information.

Lea M. Beaulieu, Ph.D.

Published in a classic 1957 paper,this discovery is acclaimed as beingfoundational in the field of neuroscience.Indeed, all work on the brain that fol-lowed was based on this information.

Mountcastle’s influence in the neuro-

castle, for students who have graduatedfrom a public high school in Roanoke,Salem and Roanoke County, and whomeet the requirements for admissionto the College’s Honors Program. TheMountcastles’ intent, according to thescholarship description, “is to supportthe most talented young people whoattend Roanoke College.”

CARL WILLIAM GOTTSCHALKCarl Gottschalk enrolled at Roanoke

College in 1938 and graduated with abaccalaureate degree in biology in 1942.A man of diverse interests, he was con-sidered an expert on butterflies. His firstscientific publication, produced whilehe was still an undergraduate student,included a description of a new butterflyspecies he discovered locally that bearshis name: Stryman cecrops gottschalkii.

Gottschalk entered the University ofVirginia’s School of Medicine in 1942 andreceived his M.D. in 1945. Followinggraduation, he spent a year doing amedical internship at MassachusettsGeneral Hospital in Boston, followedby two years of service as a researchscientist in the Army Medical Corps.

He returned to Boston in 1948 for aresearch fellowship in the Harvard Uni-versity laboratory of Dr. Eugene Landis,

Dr. Vernon Mountcastle, at left, in the 1960s, and at right, in a 2007 photo that appeared in Hopkins Medicine magazine. Photo at right: Keith Weller, courtesy of Johns Hopkins Medicine

bel Prize. He was elected to membershipin numerous societies, including the U.S.National Academy of Sciences and waselected a Foreign Associate of England’sRoyal Society. Notably, he shared theLasker Award — considered by many tobe the American “Nobel Prize” — withtwo scientists who went on to win theNobel. He was awarded the NationalMedal of Science in 1986, an honor hesaid he cherishes most. He holds severalhonorary degrees, including one awardedby Roanoke College in 1968.

Mountcastle retired from his positionas University Professor of Neuroscienceat Johns Hopkins in 1998, but continuedon as Emeritus Professor until 2005,when he withdrew completely from anyactive scientific or University work.

“My years at Roanoke College werewonderful,” said Dr. Mountcastle,now 93 and living with his wife in theBaltimore, Md. area. “Faculty members,across all disciplines, clearly wereinterested in teaching, were good at it,and enjoyed it.”

“I’ve always felt that I was lucky tohave gone to Roanoke and have admiredthe institution my whole life.”

In 2000, Mountcastle and his wife es-tablished a scholarship in memory oftheir son, George Earle Pierpont Mount-

Paris Butler, M.D., M.P.H.

Current position: Instructor of Medicine,University of Massachusetts Medical SchoolUndergraduate Education: B.S. Biology,Roanoke College, Salem, Va., 2001Graduate Education: Ph.D. in Cellular andMolecular Pathology, University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., 2007Postdoctoral Fellowship:

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Boston University School of Medicine,Boston, Mass., 2007-2011

Fellowships:• Sykes Fellowship, University of North Carolina, 2001-2002• Integrative Vascular Biology Predoctoral Training Grant,University of North Carolina, 2002-2004• NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service AwardPredoctoral Fellowship, University of North Carolina, 2006-2007• Multidisciplinary Training in Cardiovascular ResearchPostdoctoral Fellowship, Boston University School of Medicine,2007-2010

Academic Appointments:• Instructor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts MedicalSchool, 2011Primary specialty: Platelet and Megakaryocyte BiologyWhy I chose to pursue a career in the medical profession:I chose a career in academic biomedical research for variousreasons. I enjoy teaching, and identified this as a teaching assistantin the science labs at Roanoke College. I had done research in boththe biology and chemistry departments at the College and also haddone a NSF-sponsored summer research internship. I enjoyed thework because the projects were like puzzles to me — using specifictools I could find a solution to the question at hand. Every questionled to another, which eventually created a story. But the topics ofthese projects were not what I really wanted to study. I was moreinterested in diseases — why we got sick, how diseases pro-gressed, and how our bodies fought them off. My interest in thistopic was also personal. I had family and friends that were affectedby various diseases. I wanted to make a difference and sawresearch as an opportunity to do just that.

Current position: Chief Surgical Resident,University of Virginia Department of SurgeryUndergraduate Education: Double MajorB.S. Biology and Sociology, RoanokeCollege, Salem, Va., 2000Medical Education: Doctor of MedicineM.D., University of Virginia School of Medi-cine, Charlottesville, Va., 2004; Master’s

Degree in Public Health M.P.H., University of California-Berkeley,Berkeley, Calif., 2009.Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Stanford University,Stanford, Calif., 2009Internships:• Internship, University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville,Va., 2005Residency:• Resident in General Surgery, University of Virginia HealthSystem, Charlottesville, Va., 2012

• Residency/Fellowship in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,University of Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa., to beginJuly 2012Membership:• Resident Member, American Medical Association: 2005-present• Resident Member, American College of Surgeons: 2005-present• Resident Member, Society of Black Academic Surgeons:2005-present

Primary specialty: General Surgery/Plastic and ReconstructiveSurgeryWhy I chose to pursue a career in the medical profession:In my humble opinion there could not be a more satisfyingprofession. The combination of scientific intrigue, technicalexpertise, and most significantly, a dedication to humanitarianefforts separates medicine/surgery from all others. I believethat being a physician is a calling and I could think of nobetter field to have dedicated my life.

MOUNTCASTLE IS AMONGTHE MOST DECORATEDSCIENTISTS OF OUR TIME.THE ONLY MAJOR AWARDHE HAS NOT RECEIVEDIS THE NOBEL PRIZE.

science field was pervasive. A prolificauthor, he wrote several books, sat oneditorial boards of the most prestigiousjournals, and served as a reviewer for re-search grant proposals submitted to theNational Institutes of Health. A foundingmember of the Society of Neuroscience,Mountcastle chaired the Department ofNeuroscience at Hopkins for many years,and was central to the establishment ofHopkins’s Mind/Brain Institute.

Mountcastle is among the most deco-rated scientists of our time. The only ma-jor award he has not received is the No-

17Roanoke College Magazine16 Roanoke College Magazine

a major player in the cardiovascularphysiology field. Gottschalk’s experi-ences there, would set the course for therest of his professional life.

Gottschalk moved to Chapel Hill in1952 and established a research labora-tory at the University of North CarolinaSchool of Medicine, having decided todo full-time renal physiology research.

A human kidney contains about 1million individual blood filtering unitscalled nephrons. Understanding how thekidney worked required understandinghow nephrons worked, and theirsmall size made them very difficult toapproach experimentally.

Influenced by his time in Boston,Gottschalk believed that a methodknown as micropuncture — in whichthe tips of human hair-sized glass tubesare inserted into tiny spaces to samplefluids and measure pressures — couldbe used to determine how a nephron,and by extension, the kidney, worked.

Gottschalk perfected the application

mendations led to the passage of law thatallowed dialysis treatment to be coveredby Medicare and Medicaid, making thislife-saving therapy available to the pub-lic regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.

Gottschalk died in 1997.“Dr. Carl Gottschalk can truly be de-

scribed as a pioneer in the field of renalphysiology,” said Dr. Julie Haddy ’97,associate professor of Clinical Medicineat the West Virginia University School ofMedicine and a practicing nephrologist.“His ground-breaking experiments pro-vided the framework for understandingthe complexities of the kidney.”

THEOPHILUS SHICKEL PAINTERTheophilus Painter was the son of

one of Roanoke’s most respectedfaculty members, F.V.N. Painter, who wasat Roanoke at the turn of the 20thcentury. Theophilus Painter graduated

from Roanoke in 1908 and went to YaleUniversity, where he received his Ph.D.in 1913.

Painter next went to Germany’sWürzburg University and the laboratoryof Theodor Boveri, one of the pre-emi-nent cell biologists at that time. There,Painter cultivated an already active in-terest in the material found in cells thatappeared to drive all cellular function.That material, DNA, is typically found indiscrete units called chromosomes. Lit-tle was known about either the structureof these DNA units or how they worked.

Returning to the United States fromEurope in 1914, he was an instructor atYale for two years, and taught summercourses at the Woods Hole Marine Bio-logical Laboratory before moving in1916 to the University of Texas at Austin,where he spent the rest of his career,interrupted only by military serviceduring World War I.

Painter focused his attention on aspecial set of chromosomes in salivarygland cells of the common fruit fly,which are larger and more visible thanchromosomes in other cells. Using cleverstaining procedures, he was able to pro-vide direct visual evidence that thechromosomes consisted of a series ofdistinct units, called genes.

Painter did the earliest work on map-ping these chromosomes, summarizingthis research in a series of classic papersin the 1920s and 1930s. For this criticalwork, Painter was elected to the Na-tional Academy of Sciences and wasawarded that group’s Giraud Elliot Medalfor outstanding contribution to sciencein 1934. In 1942, he was awarded anhonorary doctorate by Roanoke College.

“As a practicing geneticist, early inmy career, I knew and taught Painter’swork as a constant in every geneticscourse,” said Dr. David Gring, RoanokeCollege president emeritus.

Painter’s faculty career was interruptedin 1944 when he was appointed presi-dent of the University of Texas. Asked tofill that role because of his experienceand strong academic reputation atthe university, Painter was permanentlyappointed to the position in 1946.

The war and post-war periods weredifficult for all academic institutions and

Dr. Carl Gottschalk, who perfected the application ofmicropuncture technique to the study of kidney function.

Painter was noted for his skill in negoti-ating in fiscally-challenging times. Therewas much conflict during the post-warperiod at UT between a liberal faculty,and a conservative Board of Regents andTexas state government, particularly af-ter Herman Sweatt, an African American,applied for and was denied admission tothe UT School of Law.

Painter, following the Texas constitu-tion, statutes and an attorney general’sopinion, had rejected Sweatt’s applica-tion on the basis of race. Sweatt then

sued the university. The case, Sweatt v.Painter, went to the U.S. Supreme Court,which ruled unanimously in Sweatt’s favor.The landmark case was a harbinger of civilrights legal events to come; Brown v. Boardof Education followed soon thereafter.

Painter is said to have served as aneffective mediator during a difficult timein UT’s history. He resigned from admin-istrative duties in 1952, returning to theUT faculty until his retirement in 1966. Hedied in 1969.

The esteem in which Painter is held byUT is reflected in the fact that his namegraces several campus landmarks, includ-ing the physics building. In 1984, UTestablished the T.S. Painter CentennialProfessorship in Genetics.

WHERE GIANTS DWELLRoanoke College produced three

alumni whose discoveries changed the sci-entific world. President Michael Maxey,reflecting on the significant accomplish-ments of these three individuals, notedthat “Roanoke alumni are far more influ-ential in more extraordinary ways thananyone would anticipate based on the sizeof the College.”

“That means the College attracts peoplewith great minds, nurtures and refines

Adam Cassis, M.D.

Dr. Theophilus Painter, who is known for his work inidentifying genes in fruit flies.

Current position: Neurotology fellow, HouseEar Clinic; attending physician, Los AngelesCounty-University of Southern CaliforniaHospitalUndergraduate Education: B.S. Biology,Roanoke College, Salem, Va., 2002.Medical Education: Doctor of Medicine,West Virginia University School of Medicine,

Morgantown, W.Va., 2006.Internships:• Internship, West Virginia University Hospitals, Morgantown,W.Va., 2006-2007.Residency:• Resident in Otolaryngology, West Virginia University Hospitals,Morgantown, W.Va., 2007-2011.

Fellowships:• Neurotology Fellow, House Ear Clinic, Los Angeles, Calif.,2011-present.

Academic Appointments:• Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Hospital.Board Certifications:• American Board of Otolaryngology: 2012.Primary specialty: Otology & Skull Base Surgery.Why I chose to pursue a career in the medical profession:I chose my career in the medical profession for many reasons,but primarily it was to help and improve people’s lives in a directand immediate fashion. The reward of establishing personal rela-tionships and making a positive impact on their lives is somethingI continue to treasure. Additionally, I have always had an interestin surgery, even before my time spent in my undergraduate stud-ies. Advances in surgical techniques and technology also makemedicine an exciting field. It certainly promotes continual learningas well as opportunities for research, both clinically and in the lab.My field of otology/neurotology affords me the ability to practicenew techniques and implement new technologies in the treatmentof hearing and balance disorders, as well as skull base tumors.

Dr. Darwin Jorgensen is Brian H. Thornhill Professorin the Biology Department at Roanoke College.

“DR. CARL GOTTSCHALK CAN TRULY BE DESCRIBED AS APIONEER IN THE FIELD OF RENAL PHYSIOLOGY. HIS GROUND-BREAKING EXPERIMENTS PROVIDED THE FRAMEWORKFOR UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE KIDNEY.”

of the micropuncture technique to thestudy of kidney function. His work pro-vided much of the experimental evidencethat established the connection betweenour working kidneys and virtually everyphysiological process of our bodies. Hiscontributions to the field of nephrologyhave had far-reaching impact.

He was promoted to professor ofmedicine and physiology in 1961 and in1969, he was appointed Keenan Profes-sor of Medicine and Physiology, the mostdistinguished academic appointmentat UNC. Upon his retirement in 1992,he was made Distinguished ResearchProfessor. He received numerous honorsand awards for his research, includingthe first Berliner Award for Excellence inRenal Physiology. He received an hon-orary doctorate from Roanoke College in1966 and was named a SesquicentennialDistinguished Alumnus in 1992.

Gottschalk became more publiclyprominent when, in 1966, he was askedto chair the Special Committee on Kid-ney Disease, formed by the U.S. Bureauof the Budget. The committee’s recom-

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their skills, and gives them the confi-dence to influence the world,” Maxeysaid. “This is true in all fields, but it isespecially true in the sciences.” RC

The current science center complexat Roanoke College, incorporating theLife Science and Massengill buildingsand Trexler Hall, houses three sciencedepartments: Biology, Chemistry, andMathematics/Computer Science/Physics.This complex opened in 1969 and hasserved the College and students sincethat time. Its science faculty and stu-dent numbers have grown progressivelyover these past 40-plus years, and therequirements to support science teachingand research are beginning to outstrip thecurrent facilities. In a new science age,the College is beginning a multi-yeareffort aimed at renovating the complex tocarry science at Roanoke through thenext 50 years. — Dr. Dar Jorgensen

S C I E N C E A T R O A N O K E :

LOOKING FORWARD