Howard Curtis Berg, a biophysicist who sought to understand the mechanics of bacterial movement, particularly that of E. coli, died on December 30, 2021, at the age of 87.
Berg was born in Iowa City on March 16, 1934, according to an obituary from Harvard University. His father was a biochemist at the University of Iowa and Berg followed a similar path, receiving his undergraduate chemistry degree from Caltech in 1956. According to his CV, he then completed a Fulbright Fellowship at Carlsberg University in Copenhagen before going to Harvard Medical School to do preclinical studies. He remained in that position until 1959, when he changed gears and pursued further education at the university, getting his master’s in physics in 1960 and his PhD in chemical physics four years later. He stayed at Harvard to teach and study cell membrane structure until 1970, when he took a faculty position at ...
