A surprise party after a speech on genetic recombination Wednesday afternoon celebrated the career of Frank Stahl, who has been a professor in the University’s Institute of Molecular Biology for 46 years and will close his laboratory and retire in June.
As introductory speaker of the 20th annual George Streisinger Memorial Lecture, Stahl honored the longtime tradition of the lecture series by presenting a seminar himself. He spoke about his students’ research regarding chromosomes in yeast and how they worked hard to find a solution to a problem that seemed initially unsolvable.
“I’m very proud of them and I wanted the opportunity to display their accomplishment,” Stahl said after the speech.
Stahl’s primary research focus during his time at the University has been genetic recombination, which he described in an e-mail as “the trick whereby homologous chromosomes break and swap parts with each other” during cell division. The process allows two parent organisms to combine DNA to create an offspring that contains part of each parent.
The surprise reception in Streisinger Hall’s Aaron Novick Conference Room followed
the speech, where colleagues, students, friends and family gathered to celebrate Stahl’s career.
“This is our last chance to celebrate someone that we admire tremendously, both as a scientist and as a teacher and as a humanitarian,” post-doctoral fellow Barclay Browne, who has worked in Stahl’s lab for five years, said. “It is truly inspiring to work in Frank’s lab.”
Stahl was hired in 1959 as an
associate professor of biology and research associate with the
University’s newly formed IMB. According to the book, “From
The Sidelines,” by Lotte Streisinger, widow of IMB professor George Streisinger, Stahl was well-known after he did an experiment on DNA replication as a
research fellow at the California Institute of Technology.
When the IMB recruited Stahl, he was an associate professor at the University of Missouri but was unhappy there. In the e-mail he wrote that the statements by IMB director Aaron Novick and the temperate climate and beautiful scenery of Eugene convinced him to move.
The institute was founded to emphasize research and integrate the work of biologists, chemists and physicists. Originally, it had four main professors: Novick, Stahl, George Streisinger and
Sidney Bernhard. Stahl, the only surviving member of those four, described his biggest accomplishment at the University as persuading Streisinger and Ira Herskowitz to join the faculty.
Currently the institute has 17 regular faculty members, plus three or four more associated with the department, and includes select graduate students from the biology, chemistry and physics departments, IMB Office Manager Kathy Campbell told the Emerald in January.
“As it grew in size, it inevitably lost some of its pioneering spirit and its democratic mode of
operation,” Stahl wrote in the
e-mail. “Of course, during
this same period it expanded its scientific horizons.”
Stahl became a full professor and member of the institute in 1963. Through the course of his career, he spent time researching in England, Scotland, Italy and Israel and served on the editorial boards of various journals. He became an American Cancer Society Research Professor of Molecular Genetics in 1985. Since 2001 he has been an American Cancer Society Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University.
Stahl is also known as a peace
activist.
“Most biologists are biologists because they like living
things,” Stahl said. “War is bad for living things.”
Stahl’s son Andy Stahl said his father has been a peace activist since he aided Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling’s pleas to stop above-ground nuclear testing at the California Institute of Technology. He added that both his parents were early critics of the Vietnam War.
“I don’t know whether our phone was tapped by the FBI, but for many years, it didn’t work very well,” Andy Stahl said.
Andy Stahl said his father received numerous requests for copies of his articles, and during the Vietnam War, stamped all the articles he sent out with the phrase, “U.S. out of Vietnam.” He said the University administration found out about the practice and complained but couldn’t stop it.
“Any efforts to silence him were doomed from the beginning,” Andy Stahl said.
A cake at the reception bore the message, “Jette & Frank Happy Cabbage Farming.” Jette Foss, Stahl’s partner, explained the
statement as an allusion to the Roman emperor Diocletian, who retired to grow cabbage along the Mediterranean Sea.
“I don’t think that Frank will grow cabbage,” she said. “It’s a symbol for a glorious retirement.”
Foss, who was a graduate student in Stahl’s lab 40 years ago and came back years later, said Stahl will still have an office on campus to write papers for publication and speak at meetings, although the laboratory will be closed.
“He’s not turning his brain off, you can be sure of that,” American Cancer Society Professor Peter von Hippel, who has worked with Stahl in the IMB since 1967, said.
“First we must write some
papers on the wonderful work that my students have accomplished over the past few years,” Stahl wrote in the e-mail, describing his plans for retirement. “After that?
I wonder.”

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