STORIES in Agriculture and Life Sciences

Spring 2008

STORIES

Fromm’s students comment on their mentor

Herbert Fromm has had a remarkable career at Iowa State University. The Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology also has been a pivotal figure in the lives of many of his students, who’ve gone on to their own distinguished careers.

Here are additional quotes, comments and memories of their mentor from three of Fromm’s former students: Dan Purich (’73 PhD biochemistry), professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Florida College of Medicine; Mark Stayton (’80 PhD agricultural biochemistry), chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Wyoming; and Lief Solheim (’82 PhD biochemistry and biophysics), vice president of research for Archer Daniels Midland in Decatur, Ill.

On the importance and significance of Fromm’s scientific contributions

Solheim: “Dr. Fromm’s research is important on several levels. Enzymes are the actors in metabolism that converts one material to another. They’re responsible for converting the food we eat into energy, into muscle and other components in our bodies. Without an understanding of how enzymes function, we cannot understand how life functions. Dr. Fromm’s research helps define how enzymes interact with substrate and product molecules and how regulator factors affect their activity. His discoveries increased our knowledge of how enzyme reactions were controlled in the cell by substrate, by product and by other regulating molecules not involved in the reaction. On another level, enzymes are catalysts used in industrial processes generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for American companies. Understanding how enzymes function is a first requirement to applying them to industrial processes.”

Purich: “Dr. Fromm’s research in the field of enzyme kinetics provided the tools for scientists around the world to analyze enzyme reactions. It’s that careful analysis of enzymes that has allowed for development of specific inhibitors in medicine and agriculture. He was the one who enabled this systematic investigation. It was a powerful contribution to the field and he has had a powerful and lasting effect on the field. He helped many biochemists improve their abilities to solve problems much more effectively because he gave them the logic for how to study a wide range of enzyme reactions. These are very fundamental contributions.”

Purich: “I believe Herb’s been a quiet giant at Iowa State University. Many don’t realize the many contributions he’s made. His publications are virtually written in stone. When I was a graduate student, Dr. Fromm already had developed a great reputation as a novel thinker on enzyme kinetics and had figured out how to understand things about enzyme reactions that other people had missed.”

On Fromm as a mentor and teacher

Solheim: “He taught me how to be a scientist. His insight and mentoring instilled in me the skills necessary for a successful career.”

Purich: “Herb was the kind of professor who visited the lab in the evenings and on weekends to check on the progress of experiments. Some professors treat students only as technicians. Dr. Fromm really depended on students to develop their own talents to their fullest. Many of us were able to develop our own independent careers and become scholars in our own right. Herb really could bring that out in his students.”

Stayton: “Fromm is a great scientist, but also a great teacher. I was his TA. I think there’s more focus on the show-business side of teaching these days. I’m not sure Herb fits that mold. He was precise and quantitative, and those are characteristics that are far more important. Dr. Fromm demanded maximum performance from us, but he was always there to provide reassurance if we needed help.”

Purich: “When I was at Iowa State, it was rare that you could graduate under Herb with less than five publications to your name. I think that’s rare these days. He did it all in a way that allowed students to feel that they had their own intellectual freedom, our own ability to figure out what was happening. Herb persuaded us that we might make a contribution where others had failed. By doing that, and supporting us, and being incredibly focused and attentive to our needs, we were able to do things in a highly effective and productive way. Because of his focus and intensity, we operated with more focus and intensity.”

Stayton: “Herb, his lab and the department were a perfect fit for me. Herb was a great experimentalist who demanded clean thinking of his students as well as his peers. He demanded that an experiment be designed to yield an answer. That may sound trivial. But it’s a discipline to be able to think through an experiment and improve your chances of making an incremental advance when it’s complete. You have fewer wasted experiments. To me, that has always been the sign of a great scientist. It was wonderful training for me.”

On memories and keeping in touch

Stayton: “I remember Herb as the consummate pheasant hunter. Before graduating, many of his students had taken their turn on pheasant hunts with their mentor. I wasn’t a hunter at the time, but I became one. Now when I go pheasant hunting, I always think of Herb. We’re trying to plan an antelope hunting trip in Wyoming in the future. Last summer, I stopped in Ames to return a canoe I’d borrowed from Fromm years ago.”