16/06/2017
Note about Peter Model by the Rockefeller University President
Office of the President | June 15, 2017
Dear colleagues,
I write today to share the sad news that Peter Model, an emeritus faculty member who spent 50 years at Rockefeller, died Friday, June 9, at the age of 84.
Peter joined Rockefeller in 1967 as a postdoc in Norton Zinder’s Laboratory of Genetics, was named assistant professor just two years later, and rose to full professor in time. In the laboratory, the two men worked as equal partners, and Peter became co-head of the lab in 1987. Peter opened a number of new lines of research, championing the use of molecular genetic techniques in the laboratory, initiating explorations of the biochemistry underlying the translocation of phage proteins across bacterial membranes, membrane anchoring of proteins, and questions of protein structure. He also developed phage display methods for identifying novel protein-protein interactions, conducted expansive studies of the protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions driving phage assembly, and discovered and explored a novel regulatory pathway that responds to membrane stress in bacteria.
Additionally, Peter took a keen interest in the education and training of younger scientists and was the primary advisor for a number of graduate students and postdocs in the lab over the years. He also served as associate dean of curriculum under deans Bruce McEwen and Norton Zinder from 1992 to 1995.
Born in Frankfurt, Peter escaped N**i Germany as a nine-year-old, moving to New York with his parents in 1942. He studied economics at Cornell and Stanford and served in the United States Army as a first lieutenant after graduation. After working in his father’s investment banking business for a few years, he left to pursue a fascination with science that dated from childhood, receiving his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University.
Peter brought an incisive, inquisitive mind to his research, and was often responsible for the astute question that would push an investigation in the right direction. He enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow scientists, served as an informal mentor to many junior faculty members who sought his advice, and was an active member of the Rockefeller community until very recently, when his health began to decline.
Please join me in sending our deepest condolences to his wife, Marjorie Russel—his partner both at home and in the lab for decades—and to his children, Paul and Sascha. Peter will be greatly missed and long remembered by the entire Rockefeller community.
Sincerely,
Rick
Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D.
President
The Rockefeller University
