Profile of Edward H. Egelman

Abstract

Edward H. Egelman has had a long and distinguished career as a biophysicist, but he took a fairly circuitous path into science. Egelman graduated high school in 1968, a particularly tumultuous year for the United States. “This was the peak of the Vietnam war and my main interests at that point were focused on opposition to the Vietnam war and issues of social justice, racism, and inequality,” he says. After starting an undergraduate degree at Brandeis University, Egelman dropped out and was actively involved in the antiwar movement. Edward H. Egelman. Image credit: UVA Health/Kay Taylor. When Egelman eventually went back to Brandeis, an interest in philosophy led him to pursue a degree in physics. “I thought that maybe physics held the answer to all these interesting philosophical questions,” he says. After completing a physics major within a year and a half and graduating in 1976, Egelman started a doctorate in experimental high-energy physics at Harvard University. “I quickly became pretty disillusioned with that type of physics; it was sort of industrial scale with [dozens of] authors on each paper,” he says. As he considered his next steps, Egelman recalled enjoying his undergraduate honors research project with David DeRosier, whose work lay at the intersection of physics and biology. “I had so much fun doing that project, and I thought perhaps biophysics might be as much fun,” he says. Egelman returned to Brandeis to work with DeRosier for his doctorate in biophysics. “In biophysics, a person could do something on a benchtop that was both interesting and potentially relevant to public health,” says Egelman. “Everything I’ve done since then is sort of a continuation of that work,” he says. During his career, Egelman has deciphered the structure and function of protein polymers and has made key contributions to the use …