Joseph G. Gall

With deep sadness, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) notes the passing of Joseph G. Gall, 96, an MBL Society member and former MBL course faculty member and alumnus, on September 12, 2024. The MBL flag will be lowered in his memory.

Gall was known as “a founder of modern cell biology for his contributions to our understanding of chromosomes and the cell nucleus, and a widely recognized champion for women in science,” reported Carnegie Science, where Gall was a researcher before his retirement in 2020.

Gall first came to the MBL in 1951 as a student in the Embryology course, returning in 1972 to serve on the course’s faculty.  In 1983, Gall joined the MBL Physiology course as a faculty member. His commitment to education and scientific advancement at MBL continued when he taught in the Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy (AQLM) course in 2001.

Gall’s research contributions were transformative. Among them, Gall and his graduate student Mary Lou Pardue developed in situ hybridization, a powerful technique that allows researchers to locate and map genes on chromosomal DNA, when Gall was on the faculty at Yale University in the late 1960s.

 “A decade later, Gall’s work with graduate student Elizabeth Blackburn revealed the structure of telomeres, a repetitive segment of DNA at the end of each chromosome, which protects the genetic material from damage and ensures it is fully copied prior to cell division,” reported Carnegie Science. Blackburn would go on to co-discover telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens each strand of DNA before it is copied, and to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019.

Gall was widely known and beloved for his expert and gracious mentorship of generations of cell biologists, including many affiliated with the MBL’s Embryology and Physiology courses. He was also a distinguished microscopist.

An obituary published by Gall’s family is here.