MINA BISSELL
Distinguished Scientist, Biological Systems
and Engineering Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CAMARILYN CHUNG/BERKELEY LAB“The reason I still travel and give talks, meet young scientists, and do interviews is that I see young people are inspired by my story of how I have persisted,” says Mina Bissell of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California. “I have been saying the same thing since 1981 and only in the last 15 or so years have many other scientists come around. But I never wanted to quit. If you are passionate and you have ideas leading to rigorous proof, you need to trust yourself.”
Bissell, who is easily past retirement age, is not ready to retire. “I don’t know what I would do with myself. My husband is essentially retired, and he is learning to play the fiddle and to speak French. But I think I would drive myself and my family crazy if I retired! . . . One of the biggest lessons I convey to others is the tremendous dignity that comes with work.”
In 1981, then a senior scientist at LBNL, Bissell challenged scientific dogma about how much cell culture studies can reveal about whole organisms, asserting that changes in gene expression and function in culture differ from patterns within tissues and organisms, and therefore, that microenvironment regulates cell function. The following year, she proposed that ...
