L-R: Doug Eveleigh; Nan Waksman Schanbacher, granddaughter of Selman Waksman; Amy Vollmer and Jörg Overmann, inaugural Douglas Eveleigh Lecturer.
Douglas Eveleigh, distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, was honored by the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology with a lectureship in his name. “The Douglas Eveleigh Lecture on Microbial Diversity,” is endowed by the foundation in recognition of Eveleigh’s efforts to sustain the legacy of Selman Waksman.
Amy Vollmer, president of the Waksman Foundation, announced the lectureship during the Microbial Diversity Symposium, held at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, in June. Volmer noted that Eveleigh “singlehandedly has sustained the legacy of Selman Waksman’s work, both the physical space as well as the narrative of the work in his laboratory.”
Volmer named Jörg Overmann, professor and director of the Leibniz-Institute German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, as the inaugural Douglas Eveleigh lecturer for the symposium’s Microbial Diversity Course. In his lecture, “More than the sum of its parts: Heterologous multicellularity in phototropic consortia,” Overmann detailed the contributions of individual cells within a consortial photosynthetic “mass” through use of elegant microscopy combined with varied physico-chemical approaches.
Eveleigh was also recognized by the foundation for his organization of the conference, “Antibiotics – Soil’s Microbial Miracles,” held in December 2012 at Rutgers to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Selman Waksman’s winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952. The Officers and the Board of Trustees of the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology noted Eveleigh’s many accomplishments, calling him a “fabulous teacher, mentor and scientist in your work in microbial diversity.”
