PHILIP SIEKEVITZ

SIEKEVITZ--Philip, 91, died December 5 in Manhattan. He is survived by his beloved wife, Rebecca, and daughters, Ruth and Miriam. He was born in 1918 in Philadelphia, PA, to Joseph and Tillie, immigrants from Russia. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science with a B.S. in biology in 1942, he served with the U.S. Army Air Force. In 1945, thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was able to enter the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1949. After postdoctoral fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital and McArdle Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, he joined the Laboratory of Cell Biology at Rockefeller University in 1954. He became head of the Laboratory and continued at Rockefeller, becoming an emeritus professor upon his retirement in 1988. His areas of interest included amino acid metabolism, intracellular structures, protein synthesis and cell structures, mitochondria and oxidative phosphorylation, membrane organization, and neurobiology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was an active member of various professional societies and served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology and of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was an editor and member of the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals and was a coauthor of the 1963 Cell Structure and Function, an early cell-biology textbook, which was translated into numerous languages. He was passionately involved with issues of science and public policy, education and ethics. He loved New York City, music, art, architecture and travel. He will be greatly missed. Memorial contributions may be made to the charity of your choice.