Linda B. Buck was born as a middle child in Seattle, Washington to a homemaker and an electrical engineer. She certainly didn’t expect that she would become a world-renowned scientist. The biggest acknowledgment of her life was when she received her Nobel Prize in 2004 for her work in Physiology or Medicine. Linda Buck’s journey started at a young age when her parents told her she could be whatever she wanted. The lessons she learned from a young age reflected on who she has turned into today; her mother taught her how to appreciate music and beauty and her father taught her how to build things and use power tools. Buck’s parents taught her important lessons such as being independent and critical and “not settling for something mediocre” (nobelprize.org).
Linda didn’t think she would be working in the field of science, in fact, she never had the intention to become a scientist—let alone a biologist. She entered the University of Washington for her undergrad degree in psychology in hopes of becoming a psychotherapist, but those plans quickly changed when she took her first class in immunology. Inspired, she changed her career path to become a biologist. She then went to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where she fully began learning how to become a real scientist. Her thesis was comparing the functional properties of subsets of B lymphocytes that differed in the class of cell surface immunoglobulin that they used as antigen receptors. Her master's program got her to start thinking in terms of molecules and the molecular mechanisms underlying biological systems, because of this, she wanted to gain insight into those mechanisms in her experiments.
After her master’s degree, she continued her education at Columbia so she would work on her Ph.D. in immunology. As she was working on her Ph.D., she then became enticed by the concept of the unexplained requirement for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins in immune responses. She then changed labs to work under Richard Axel. Unlike her usual mentors, Axel would give his Ph.D. students practically full independence over the labs and they would be able to work for their own results in their experiments. After working on Aplysia, Buck then became fascinated with odor receptors. Buck remained at Axel’s lab and continued to research odor receptors, then with sufficient information, she was able to publish the paper along with Axel.
When Buck finished her Ph.D., she then began her job at Harvard as an assistant professor in the neurobiology department where she broadened her education about the nervous system. As an assistant professor, she was able to receive support to build a lab. In this lab, she discovered odorant receptors that explained how the olfactory system detects odorants. With such a large accomplishment, Buck continued to work harder and set more goals. Her next goal was to figure out how these signals from the receptors are organized in the brain to generate diverse odor perceptions. With amazing students and help from other professors, they made plenty of discoveries on the organization of the olfactory system that was then cited by the Nobel Foundation. After her Nobel prize, she continued to make more discoveries within the olfactory system and publish many more papers.
Buck had moved back to Seattle after spending about a decade in Boston. Buck had then become a member of the Division of Basic Sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an Affiliate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington. She continued her studies on olfactory receptors and mapped out the process at a molecular level by tracing odors from the cells of the nose to the brain because she truly had become passionate about her work. Her years of work and dedication to olfactory receptors helped her receive plenty of awards such as the Takasago Award, Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award, Gardner Foundation International Award, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and ForMemRS. She came out to state that she wanted to lead as an example for girls all around the world because she proved that women could excel in the world of science
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