Biographical Sketch – Franklyn G. Prendergast, 1997
Dr. Franklyn G. Prendergast, M.D., Ph.D. has focused his career on three important areas of research: the structure, dynamics, and function of protein, biochemistry, and biophysics of bioluminescence, and the biophysics of lipid-protein interactions.
Prendergast was born in 1945 in Linstead Jamaica and graduated with Honors from the University of the West Indies. He then earned a BA 1st. Class at Oxford University. After Oxford, he entered the Ph.D. program in Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota where he worked on the physical and chemical properties of Aequorea forsalea. He has earned many honors reflecting his outstanding contributions to science and has published 120 papers and abstracts. He won a Nuffield Fellowship and was a Rhodes Scholar in 1969. He was awarded a Minnesota Heart Postdoctoral Fellowship from 1975-1977, an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, and was a Searle Foundation Fellow 1980-83. He is the Edmond and Marion Guggenheim Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was named the Distinguished Alumnus of the University of West Indies in 1991, Mayo Distinguished Investigator in 1988, awarded a D.Sc. (In honoris causa) from Purdue University in 1994 and Mayo Distinguished Lecture in Medical Sciences 1994.
Prendergast began his career at the Mayo as an instructor in 1975 and was appointed to the faculty as an Assistant Professor in Pharmacology at the Mayo Medical School in 1977 and became a Full Professor in 1986 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and in Pharmacology at the Mayo Medical School. In addition to his research responsibilities, he has served on numerous committees at the Mayo Clinic and at the NIH. He is currently the Director of the Mayo Cancer Center.
About the Author:
Ashanti Edwards is ASCB's Director of Professional Development.
