Einstein Remembers Beloved Faculty Member and Mentor
On March 4, 2021, Einstein lost one of its early faculty members and beloved mentors, Jack Peisach, Ph.D., professor emeritus of biophysics and physiology who died peacefully of natural causes, surrounded by his family. He was 89.
“Jack was a highly respected member of our department who did ground-breaking research using electron paramagnetic resonance to study a broad range of proteins,” noted Dr. Denis Rousseau, professor and chair of biophysics and physiology. “He loved to interact with, help, and advise students and junior faculty.”
“Jack was a titan among Einstein faculty and was one of the stalwart early faculty that made Einstein great,” added Edward R. Burns, executive dean and a member of Einstein’s class of 1977. “His strength was his sheer brilliance and his comfort with himself that allowed him to strongly advocate for his positions without appearing at all egotistical.”
Identifying and Fulfilling a Need
Although trained as an organic chemist and biochemist, Jack recognized early in his research career that a dearth of tools existed for obtaining structural information regarding metalloenzymes. He was a pioneer in the field of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy applied to biological systems, such as proteins involved in oxygen transport and cellular energy production; he also was internationally renowned for research on metals in biochemistry.
Magnetic resonance techniques such as EPR spectroscopy were an outgrowth of the development of radar during World War II and had not yet been widely applied to scientific research. Jack recognized the potential of EPR for structure/function determination in metalloenzymes and initiated collaborations with physicists from Bell Labs. This work, begun at a time when not more than three EPR spectrometers existed in (physics) laboratories in the United States, resulted in an incredibly productive 40-year span of seminal contributions to the fields of both metallobiochemistry and EPR spectroscopy. Jack’s work at Bell Laboratories and at Israel’s Hadassah Medical Center was done while on sabbatical from Einstein.
During his career, Jack provided details regarding enzyme active site structures of more than 20 different enzyme systems. He accomplished this long before X-ray crystallography offered the capability to provide such information. To this day, the techniques he developed, and the resulting papers he published, remain mandatory reading for beginning graduate students in the field.
To make these new techniques available to the scientific community at large, Jack was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a research resource in pulsed EPR spectroscopy – the methodologies and equipment developed in this resource are now standards in the field and commercially available for use in physics, chemistry and biochemistry research. He also named a protein that he discovered, "Stellacyanin", after his wife.
Sharing Knowledge and Experience
Beyond his laboratory accomplishments, Jack relished his role as a mentor to his students, postdocs, and junior faculty, offering guidance and support to generations of junior investigators at Einstein and beyond. His scientific instincts were profound, and with one observation or bit of advice he could steer a student away from months of frustration and towards the successful completion of a thesis. He advised junior faculty members not to lock themselves away in their own labs but rather participate in the community of scholars, both at Einstein and in the scientific world in general.
Jack was born on August 23, 1932, in New York City, the child of immigrants Harry and Yetta Peisach. He married his beloved Estelle in 1966 and they celebrated 46 anniversaries until her passing in 2012. As a young man, Jack earned his bachelor’s degree at City College of New York and his master’s and doctoral degrees, in chemistry, from Columbia University. He also received an honorary degree in Life Sciences from Italy's University of Padua in 1990 and was recognized in 1999 for organizing the tri-annual conference "Organic Metals in Biochemistry.”
Jack had an insatiable curiosity and a deep knowledge and love of all areas of science, as well as of opera, classical music, art, and Jewish history. He was generous with this knowledge and made the lives of all who knew him richer and more exciting. He was an influential force in the lives of his students and postdocs until his passing and will remain so in memory.
He is survived by his sons Daniel and Ezra and his grandchildren Joshua and Rebecca Peisach; along with Estelle, his sister Betty also predeceased him.
You may leave a memory of Dr. Peisach on our Remembrance page.
Editor’s Note: Inside Einstein thanks Drs. Gary Gerfen and Denis Rousseau for their helpful contributions in drafting this in memoriam.
Posted on: Friday, April 09, 2021