By Michael Howell
The White House announced last month that part-time Bitterroot valley resident Stanley Falkow, PhD, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor in Cancer Research, Emeritus, at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has been awarded the 2015 National Medal of Science.
Falkow is being recognized for his pioneering work in studying how bacteria can cause human disease and how antibiotic resistance spreads. The award will be presented in a ceremony at the White House this month. Eighty-one years old, he is an emeritus professor of microbiology and immunology and a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute
“It was a total surprise,” said Falkow, who learned of the award on December 19 in an email from John Holdren, PhD, the president’s chief science adviser. “I always say, in science, it’s not ‘I,’ it’s ‘we.’ And it’s so true. There are hundreds of students and colleagues around the world with whom I’d like to share this honor.”
Falkow is well-known for his work on extrachromosomal elements called plasmids and their role in antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity in humans and animals. As a graduate student in the early 1960s, first at the University of Michigan and later at Brown University, and then as an independent researcher at Georgetown University, he studied the biochemical and microbiological techniques necessary to deduce how bacteria transmit antibiotic resistance to one another. In particular, he found that some bacteria were resistant to antibiotics to which they had never been exposed, which at first confounded researchers. Falkow subsequently discovered that bacteria gained their resistance by sharing their genes much more promiscuously than had been thought possible.
When Falkow arrived at Stanford in 1981, he set aside his study of plasmids to concentrate on how organisms as diverse as cholera, plague and whooping cough cause disease in humans.
He also came to Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton in the 1980s when he served on the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institute for Health. In that role Falkow reviewed scientific programs at RML, which is an NIH facility. He became a special volunteer at RML because it offered electron microscopic facilities that weren’t available at Stanford or elsewhere.
He also worked closely with a group of scientists that he had recruited to RML.
“He has continued to be a frequent visitor, giving seminars, attending conferences and mentoring a generation of RML scientists, including me,” said Marshall Bloom, MD, RML Associate Director for Scientific Research. At a talk in Hamilton last spring, Falkow highlighted the influence of infectious diseases on world history in a talk entitled “Human History and Infectious Diseases Collide.” His lively talk, a melding of facts and anecdotes, traced the evolution from the Reformation and Renaissance eras to Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution and beyond.
“Seldom do people realize the enormous impact infectious diseases have had on global exploration, trade and conquest,” Dr. Falkow said at the time. “Microbes have changed the course of wars, they have brought poverty to large geographic areas, and led to a concept in hygiene that we now call ‘public health’.”
According to Bloom, few people have had as pervasive an influence in science as Stanley Falkow.
“He has made impacts in every facet of modern microbiology and his trainees are leaders at the finest institutions in the world,” said Bloom. “He continues to consult with and advise RML scientists. We truly are lucky to count him as a friend.” Bloom, an avid trout fisherman, said their fishing escapades were also an integral part of Falkow’s relationship to the lab.
Falkow’s previous honors include the 2008 Lasker-Koshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science; the 2000 Robert-Koch Award from the Robert-Koch Foundation in Germany; election to the Institute of Medicine; membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society; and a former presidency of the American Society of Microbiology.