The Benjamin Rush Professorship of Biochemistry
The Professorship was created in 1910 through the bequest of an anonymous friend of Benjamin Rush, MD (1745–1813) to honor his innumerable contributions to the field of medicine and to the Perelman School of Medicine.
Dr. Rush began his medical studies at age 15. In 1762, he was one of 10 attendees of William Shippen’s course in anatomical study, the first to be offered in this country. He received his medical degree in 1768 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and returned to Philadelphia in 1769 as Professor of Chemistry at the College of Philadelphia, a precursor institution of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1789, he succeeded John Morgan, MD as Chairman of Theory and Practice of Medicine and, in 1791, was appointed Professor of the Institutes and Practice of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His work advanced the practice of medicine and modified the methods of diagnosing disease, in many cases originating new treatments. Dr. Rush was acclaimed for his bravery in addressing the yellow fever epidemic that attacked the citizens of Philadelphia in 1793. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was Treasurer of the National Mint, President of both the American Society for the Abolition of Slavery and the Philadelphia Medical Society, and a Founder of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Current Chairholder:
Kristen W. Lynch, PhD
Kristen W. Lynch, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lynch co-founded and directs the Penn RNA Group. She is an active member of the University of Pennsylvania graduate groups in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; Cell and Molecular Biology; and Immunology. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Genetics.
Dr. Lynch's research program focuses on gene regulation in the human immune system. In particular, her work centers on regulation of alternative pre-messenger ribonucleic acid (pre-mRNA) splicing: a process by which proteins with distinct functions can be generated, in response to cellular need, from a single gene. Her laboratory combines RNA biochemistry, genomics, and immunology to understand the mechanisms behind the regulation of alternative splicing in immune tissues in response to pathogens – with an eye to using such knowledge to better diagnose and treat human disease.
Widely published in the leading journals in her field, Dr. Lynch is also an editor for Molecular and Cellular Biology. She has served as a Director of the international RNA Society and has co-chaired several international meetings in the field of RNA processing. She is also the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions for her scientific achievements, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2002.
Dr. Lynch received both her bachelor's and doctorate degrees in biochemistry from Harvard University and carried out her postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco. She joined the Penn faculty as Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in 2009, having been recruited from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. There, she was Assistant and Associate Professor and chaired the Biological Chemistry Graduate Program.
A collaborative and energetic leader, Dr. Lynch has a broad vision of the future of biochemistry and biophysics at Penn and is excited to work with a fantastic group of colleagues to position Penn at the top of the field nationwide.
Previous Chairholders
- Alonzo E. Taylor, MD 1910–1922
- D. Wright Wilson, MD 1922–1954
- Samuel Gurin, PhD 1954–1965
- Howard Rasmussen, MD 1965–1975
- Mildred Cohn, MD 1978–1982
- Franz M. Matschinsky, MD 1983–2004
- A. Joshua Wand, PhD 2004-2019