BRUCE BEUTLER
Director, Center for the Genetics of Host Defense
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center© BRIAN COATS FOR UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTERBruce Beutler published his first scientific paper at the age of 16. As an apprentice in his father’s lab at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, Beutler learned how to purify proteins and assay their activity—work that led to a pair of publications on the enzyme glutathione peroxidase, including that first one in the Annals of Human Genetics in 1974.
“I don’t think there were any other students in my high school who were spending their afternoons and weekends that way,” laughs Beutler. “But in those days I was very ambitious.” Graduating from the University of California, San Diego, when he was 18, Beutler went on to obtain a medical degree from the University of Chicago. “That was something my father advised me to do. He said, ‘If you go to medical school, you’ll learn all about the workings of one specific organism.’” This knowledge, Ernest Beutler told his son, “will be extremely useful to you, no matter what you decide to do in biology.”
“He also said, ‘If you don’t do well, you’ll have something to fall back on. You can always see patients.’” ...
