Karl Maramorosch

At 101 years old, Karl Maramorosch physical status not available right now. We will update Karl Maramorosch's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In 1947, age 32 years, he and his wife emigrated via Czechoslovakia, France and Sweden to the United States. Maramorosch entered Columbia University while working as a technician at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. In 1949, he obtained his doctoral degree (Ph.D.).

Maramorosch's scientific career began at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. From 1949-60 he was a faculty member at the Rockefeller University in New York. He modified Weigl’s procedure of lice inoculation, adopting it to micro-injection of plant pathogenic viruses and phytoplasmas into leafhopper vectors. This permitted him to obtain the first evidence that certain plant pathogens multiply not only in plants, but also in specific invertebrate animal vectors.

Since 1956, when Maramorosch first cultured insect cells for use in the study of viruses, he had been an active contributor to the field of invertebrate pathology and to the study of plant and animal viruses, viroids and phytoplasmas. His research in invertebrate tissue cultures laid a foundation for the uses of invertebrate-based in vitro expression systems, as these support post-translational modification unlike prokaryotic cell cultures. These systems are used in applications that range from basic research to industrial use, and in fields that range from agriculture to medicine, pharmaceutical drug discovery, and mammalian cell gene delivery. As of 1996, the Mitsuhashi-Maramorosch insect culture medium for culturing insect cells was a widely used standard medium.

In 1960 Maramorosch worked for six months as consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the Philippines where he studied the devastating cadang-cadang coconut palm disease. From 1961 until 1973, he was Program Director of Virology at the Boyce Thompson Institute in Yonkers, New York. He and his postdoctoral associates used electron microscopy to detect and characterize viruses and phytoplasmas in cells of diseased plants and insect vectors. In 1974 Maramorosch accepted the invitation from the Board of Governors of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, to join the faculty at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology as tenured Distinguished Professor. In 1983, he was nominated the Robert L. Starkey Professor of Microbiology.

In 1980, Maramorosch was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture, often called the Agriculture Nobel Prize, for his work on interactions between insect vectors and plant pathogens. Numerous further awards followed, including the Jurzykowski Foundation Award, the AIBS Award, and two Fulbright awards.

Maramorosch traveled extensively to lecture and teach as visiting professor in Argentina, Armenia, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia. His major research interests include comparative virology, invertebrate cell culture, parasitology, emerging diseases caused by viroids, viruses, phytoplasmas and spiroplasmas, biotechnology, and international scientific cooperation.

Source

• 1959: AAAS Award
• 1962: Co-organized the first international conference on invertebrate tissue culture in Montpellier, France
• 1962: Vice President and Recording secretary, New York Academy of Sciences
• 1963: U.S. Delegate, 1st International Committee for Virus Nomenclature
• 1967-1984: Founder and editor, with Hilary Koprowski, Methods in Virology,8 vols. Academic Press
• 1970: Elected Member, Leopoldina Academy, Germany
• 1972: Fulbright Dist. Professor, Yugoslavia
• 1972–present, Editor (vols.16-81), Advances in Virus Research
• 1974–present: Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University, (currently Emeritus Professor)
• 1976: Ciba-Geigy Award in Agriculture
• 1978: ASM Waksman Award
• 1983: Distinguished Service Award of American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)
• 1984–present: Robert L. Starkey Professor of Microbiology
• 1974: Honorary Fellow, Indian National Academy of Science (currently Emeritus Professor)
• 1978: Fulbright Dist. Professor. Yugoslavia
• 1980: Wolf Prize in Agriculture,(Studies of interactions between insects and plant pathogens)
• 1981: Jurzykowski Foundation Award in Biology (for exemplary research achievements and pioneering contributions to the field of insect cell culture)
• 1981-1989: Founder and editor, Advances in Cell Culture, 8 vols. Academic Press
• 1982: Distinguished Vis. Professor, Fudan University, Shanghai
• 1987: Honorary Fellow, Indian Virological Society
• 1990: Founder’s Lecturer, Society for Invertebrate Pathology
• 1998: Founder’s honoree, Society for Invertebrate Pathology
• 1998: Honorary Member, Entomological Society of America
• 2001: Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award, Society for In Vitro Biology
• 2006: L.O. Howard Dist. Achievement Award, ESA.
• 2010: M.V. Nayudu's Life Time Achievement Award in VIROCON-2010 at Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India on 18 March 2010.
• 2011: Inaugural lecturer, 2nd Intern. Phytoplasmology Workshop, Neustadt, Germany
• 2011: Diagmol Symposium Honoree, University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
• 2011: Plenary speaker, Pi-Net Conference, Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary