Michael Menaker

Michael Menaker

Michael Menaker (May 19, 1934 – February 14, 2021) was an American chronobiologist. This means he was a scientist who studied the biological clocks that help living things keep track of time. He worked as a Commonwealth Professor of Biology at the University of Virginia.

Menaker’s work helped scientists understand how animals, including humans, follow daily and seasonal rhythms.

His research focused on circadian rhythmicity. This refers to the internal patterns that guide when we sleep, eat, and do other activities. He made important discoveries, such as finding a special change in golden hamsters that affected their daily schedules. Menaker also studied how light affects these clocks, looking at extra-retinal photoreceptors in some animals.

Among his many achievements, Menaker helped find a circadian oscillator in the pineal gland of birds. This small gland helps control biological rhythms. Throughout his career, he wrote nearly 200 scientific papers, sharing his findings with the world.

Early life and education

Michael Menaker grew up in New York City. He finished at Swarthmore College in 1955 with a biology degree. He then got a Ph.D. from Princeton University. At Princeton, he studied the daily rhythms of bats (Myotis lucifugus) in Colin Pittendrigh's lab. Pittendrigh was an expert in biological clocks.

After his Ph.D. in 1960, Menaker studied at Harvard University with Donald Griffin. He looked at how bats hibernate. In 1962, he started teaching at University of Texas at Austin. There, he studied daily rhythms in birds like the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and in golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus).

Academic career

Michael Menaker worked at important universities, including the University of Texas, the University of Oregon, and the University of Virginia. Since 1987, he was a Commonwealth Professor of Biology at the University of Virginia and led the Biology Department there from 1987 to 1993. He inspired many scientists, such as Joseph Takahashi, who now leads the Neuroscience Department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Menaker wrote almost 200 research papers and got money for his studies for over 60 years.

Scientific work

Michael Menaker was a biologist who made important discoveries about how living things keep time. In 1968, he showed that birds could tell time even without their eyes. He studied sparrows that had their eyes removed, and these birds could still follow daily light and dark patterns. This suggested they had another way to sense light.

Later, in 1988, Menaker found a special type of hamster with a shorter day length than normal. This helped scientists understand how genes control daily rhythms in mammals. His work showed that a tiny part of the brain, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, is essential for keeping these daily rhythms.

Later work

Michael Menaker’s lab at the University of Virginia studied how animals’ internal clocks work. They used special rats to see how genes change during the day and night. This helped them understand if all the body’s clocks stay in sync when light patterns change.

Menaker also found a special type of hamster that had a different internal clock. This discovery happened when his student, Ashli Moore, got a hamster from another student who wanted one with a more normal schedule. Menaker worked with these hamsters and later worked with Carla Green’s lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to learn more.

Awards and honors

Michael Menaker received many awards for his work. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He also earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Photobiology in 2002 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen in 2009.