Huang, Alice Shih-hou WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY278•
pump used to establish Boyle’s gas laws. In fact, it has been
speculated that Hooke himself may have been the author of
Boyle’s law, since, customarily, any findings from research
done in the lab would have been credited to the professor.
Along with some of his colleagues from Oxford and the
surrounding area, Hooke helped to establish what would soon
become the Royal Society, to which he was appointed Curator
of Experiments. During his time as Curator he had many other
successes attributed to him such as the compound microscope,
an improved barometer, the reflecting telescope, and the uni-
versal joint.
Although Hooke was not the first to experiment using a
microscope, he was the first to dedicate a major intensive vol-
ume to microscopy. His 1665 publication Micrographia
describes the structures of insects, fossils, and plants in
unprecedented detail. While studying the porous structure of
cork, Hooke noted the presence of tiny rectangular holes that
he called cells, a word that has been adopted as the corner-
stone of microbiology. Micrographiaalso contains illustra-
tions in Hooke’s own hand that remain among the best
renderings of microscopic views.
In the years following the great London fire of 1666,
Hooke became a surveyor and, eventually, an architect, con-
structing numerous famous buildings. Because his architec-
tural interests took much time away from his scientific work,
he was ultimately forced to retire as Curator of Experiments
for the Royal Society in favor of his new vocation.See also History of microbiology; Microscope and
microscopyHTLV• seeHUMANT-CELL LEUKEMIA VIRUS(HTLV)
HHuang, Alice Shih-houUANG, ALICESHIH-HOU(1939- )
Chinese-born American microbiologistAlice Shih-hou Huang’s discovery of reverse transcriptase, an
enzyme that allows virusesto convert their genetic material
into DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)—the molecular basis of
heredity—led to a major breakthrough in understanding how
viruses function. Searching for clues on how to prevent viruses
from replicating, Huang also isolated a rabies-like virus that
produced mutant strains that interfered with viral growth.
The youngest of four children, Huang was born in
Kiangsi, China, on March 22, 1939. Her father, the Right
Reverend Quentin K. Y. Huang, was the second Chinese
bishop ordained by the Anglican Episcopal Ministry in China.
Her mother, Grace Betty Soong Huang, undertook a career of
her own by entering nursing school at the age of forty-five. In
1949, when communism pervaded China, the Huangs sent
their children to the United States, hoping for a more stable
life and greater opportunities.
Huang was ten years old when she arrived in the United
States. She studied at an Episcopalian boarding school for
girls in Burlington, New Jersey, and at the National CathedralSchool in Washington, D.C., and became a United States citi-
zen her senior year in high school. While in China, Huang had
seen many people suffering from illness and decided to
become a physician. She attended Wellesley College in
Massachusetts from 1957 to 1959, and subsequently enrolled
in a special program at the Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine, where she earned her B.A. in 1961 and her M.A.
in 1963. While at Johns Hopkins, she chose to pursue medi-
cine not as a physician, but as a microbiologist. She published
several papers on viruses, including the herpes simplex
viruses, and earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1966.
That same year Huang served as a visiting assistant professor
at the National Taiwan University. In 1967, Huang worked as
a postdoctoral fellow with David Baltimoreat the Salk Institute
for Biological Studies in San Diego, California. Huang and
Baltimore married in 1968; they have one daughter.
Huang and Baltimore took their work to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968. At the time,
scientists understood that the genetic material DNA in cells
was converted into ribonucleic acid(RNA, nucleic acids asso-
ciated with the control of chemical activities within cells), and
then into proteins. But one of the viruses Huang studied had
an enzyme that did something different—it made RNA from
RNA. The work led to Baltimore’s research on tumor viruses
and his discovery of the enzyme called reverse transcriptase,
which threw the usual process in reverse by converting RNA
to DNA. Baltimore and American oncologist Howard Temin,
who had independently discovered reverse transcriptase, were
awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1975 for their work on
tumor viruses.
Huang became assistant professor of microbiology and
molecular geneticsat Harvard Medical School in 1971, was
promoted to associate professor in 1973, and to full professor
in 1979. She also served as an associate at the Boston City
Hospital from 1971 to 1973 and director of the infectious dis-
eases laboratory at the Children’s Hospital in Boston from
1979 to 1989. Huang studied a rabies-like virus that produced
mutant strains, which interfered with further growth of the
viral infection. She sought to understand where the mutants
originated and how they affected the viral population, knowl-
edge she hoped could be applied to halt the spread of viral
infections in humans. For this research, Huang was awarded
the Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunologyin 1977.
In 1987, she was appointed trustee of the University of
Massachusetts. The following year Huang became president
of the American Society for Microbiology, the first Asian
American to head a national scientific society in the United
States. She is also a member of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, the American Society for
Biochemistryand Molecular Biology, and the Academia Sinica
in Taiwan. Huang remained at Harvard until 1991, when she
was appointed Dean for Science at New York University.
Though Huang sees her role in administration at New
York University as important and necessary, her first love
remains basic research. Huang has numerous research publi-
cations to her credit, and has served on the editorial boards of
Intervirology, Journal of Virology, Reviews of Infectious
Diseases, Microbial Pathogenesis, andJournal of Women’swomi_H 5/6/03 3:21 PM Page 278