Marilyn Farquhar
| Marilyn Farquhar | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 11, 1928 Tulare, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | cell biology |
| Institutions | University of California, San Diego |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Academic advisors | George Palade |
| Known for | tight junctions and adherens junctions |
| Spouse | George Emil Palade |
Marilyn Gist Farquhar (born 1928) is a pathologist and cellular biologist with a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. She has won the E. B. Wilson Medal and the FASEB Excellence in Science Award. She worked at Yale University from 1973 to 1990. She was married to Nobel Laureate George Emil Palade from 1970 to his death. Currently Farquhar is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Pathology, as well as the chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Farquhar's research focuses on control of intracellular membrane traffic and the molecular pathogenesis of auto immune kidney diseases. She has yielded a number of discoveries in basic biomedical research including: mechanisms of kidney disease, organization of functions that attach cells to one another, and mechanisms of secretions.
Marilyn Gist Farquhar was born on 11 July 1928 and was raised in the Central Valley farming community of Tulare, California. Her father was from a pioneer family and worked as an insurance agent and farmer, who spent his free time writing novels. Her mother was also from a pioneer family and had begun college, but had to return home before completing her degree. Therefore, Farquhar's mother was determined that Farquhar and her sister would receive a college education. As a young girl, Farquhar often accompanied her father on hiking trips to the Sierra Nevada mountains. She remembers these trips instilling a spirit of exploration and innovation in her. However, she attributes her desire to pursue a career in medicine and biology to her mother’s friend, Frances Zumwalt, who was a pediatrician.
Farquhar received her undergraduate degree in zoology and experimental pathology from the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation, Farquhar was admitted to the medical school at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1951, Farquhar married another medical student, with whom she had two sons. However, after two years of medical school, Farquhar became fascinated with the nature of diseases and shifted to a Ph.D. program where she completed her degree in experimental pathology in 1955. During her time as a graduate student, she worked in the laboratory as a junior research pathologist and then an assistant research pathologist, after completing her Ph.D., under a pathology professor who was interested in glomerular disease. Farquhar later collaborated with the University of Minnesota as a research to study renal biopsies, where they were the first to see glomerular pathology at the electron microscope level. In 1958, she left the University of California, San Francisco to do post-doctoral work as a research associate in cell biology at Rockefeller University under George Palade. At the time, many pioneers in cell biology had worked or were currently working in this lab, where there were new discoveries almost every day due to the recent innovation of the electron microscope. George Palade was working on the kidney glomerulus at the time and provided Farquhar with formal training in the field of cell biology. Together Farquhar and Palade named tight junctions and adherens junctions. Since then, Farquhar has continued to study junctions in the podocytes.
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