May 29, 1998 Contact: Dan Heuchert (804) 924-7676 Pratt Fund Helps in Recruitment of Four Top Scientists JANIS ANTONOVICS, ACCLAIMED EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST, TO JOIN U.VA. BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT IN THE FALL A special $1.4 million distribution from the John Lee Pratt Fund, approved Friday by the University of VirginiaÕs Board of Visitors, will support the work of an internationally acclaimed biologist and the purchase of an additional nuclear magnetic resonance imaging unit for the School of Medicine. Both expenditures reflect University President John T. Casteen IIIÕs recently announced initiative to boost the quality of the sciences at U.Va. The board also approved an additional $2.6 million in annual support from the Pratt Fund for programs in chemistry, physics, medicine and biology. Half of the special distribution will go toward the hiring of Janis Antonovics, a fellow of the Royal Society described by his peers as one of the worldÕs outstanding evolutionary biologists, who will join the University faculty in the fall. ÒThere is a well-established relationship between the resources available to sustain serious work in the sciences and the results achieved,Ó said U.Va. President John T. Casteen III. ÒThis appointment, accomplished with the strategic investment of private funds, represents the first step toward our goal of becoming one of the nation's premier research institutions.Ó Antonovics, who one colleague described as Òone of the premier biologists of the 20th century,Ó has spent the past 28 years at Duke University, most recently as its James J. Wolfe Professor of Botany. Approximately $500,000 of the sum will pay for an expansion of Gilmer HallÕs greenhouse facilities to accommodate AntonovicsÕ research. Much of AntonovicsÕ recent work examines how the principles of reproductive disease transmission in plant populations may apply to the animal kingdom. Antonovics, 55, was born in Latvia and educated in Great Britain. He received an undergraduate degree from Cambridge University and received his Ph.D. from the University MORE 2 College of North Wales in Bangor. The biology department also has recruited two other new faculty members. Deborah A. Roach, another Duke population biologist, is an assistant professor who studies senescence -- the process of aging -- and the death rate in the oldest of the old. An assistant research professor at Duke, she was a magna cum laude graduate of Mount Holyoke College before earning masters and Ph.D. degrees from Duke. Arriving from the University of Tennessee is associate professor John L. Gittleman, who studies the evolution of carnivores. Gittleman, who has been called upon to assist in biodiversity and conservation issues -- including those having to do with wolves and pandas -- received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 1984. ÒWe expect these appointments will immediately place the Department of Biology among the top two to three departments nationally in the field of plant biology, and the top five to 10 departments in ecological genetics,Ó said Gene D. Block, Vice President for Research and Public Service and also a member of the biology faculty. The other half of the Pratt Fund distribution is for the School of Medicine to purchase a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging unit, which will allow researchers to peer deep into the structures of proteins. The University currently has several of the units, located in the Chemistry Building. ÒThis is not a novel technology, but one that is becoming increasingly important to the study of the structure of larger molecules, like proteins,Ó said Dr. Erik Hewlett, associate dean for research in the School of Medicine. The addition of the NMR unit was key in the recruitment of Dr. John H. Bushweller, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, Hewlett said. Bushweller, who will be central to the UniversityÕs goal of developing a world-class structural biology program at the University, will be appointed to the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. Bushweller received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley and earned a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship to study at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, Switzerland. He joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1993. The new NMR unit will reside in a specially designed annex in one of the Health Sciences CenterÕs research buildings, possibly along with another unit owned by the medical school and currently located in the Chemistry Building. John Lee Pratt, who died in 1975 at age 96, left the University $11 million in his will. He was born in King George County and earned a civil engineering degree from U.Va. in 1905. He went on to work for DuPont and later General Motors, where he rose through the ranks to vice MORE 2 president. In the process, he amassed a fortune once estimated at between $100 million and $200 million, making him one of the richest men in America. He is credited with leading the development of the refrigerant Freon. After his retirement to the Chatham estate just outside Fredericksburg, he became a philanthropist, giving away much of what he had earned. Upon his death, his will divided the bulk of his $60 million estate among eight institutions of higher education -- U.Va., Virginia Tech, Washington & Lee, Hollins College, Johns Hopkins, Sweetbriar College, Hampden-Sydney College, and Randolph-Macon WomenÕs College. U.Va. received $11 million, to be divided evenly between the School of Medicine for use in research, and four departments in the College of Arts & Sciences -- biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics -- to supplement faculty salaries, purchase equipment and fund scholarships. The will further stipulated that the funds not be used to replace state funds, and that failure to follow the conditions of the will could cause any remaining funds to be transferred to Washington & Lee. ### Television reporters should contact our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.