At the Annual American Society for Biology Meeting in San Francisco
2002 the Women In Cell Biology (WICB) Committee gave the Senior
Award to Natasha Raikhel for her outstanding scientific achievements
coupled with a long-standing record of support for women in science
and by mentorship of both men and women in scientific careers. Natasha
Raikhel received her M.S. in Biology in 1970 and her Ph.D. in Leningrad,
USSR, in 1975. After her departure from the Soviet Union in 1979,
she worked at University of Georgia, USA and from 1986 at the DOE-Plant
Research Laboratory at Michigan State University. From 2002 she
is Professor of Plant Cell Biology at the University of California
at Riverside. Her research is focused on vacuolar biogenesis, protein
trafficking and secretion and cell wall biosynthesis in plants.
Her acceptance speech:
Thank you for having honored me today in this way. I accept this
award with profound gratitude for the people and the events that
made it possible for my students, my colleagues and myself to succeed
in our work.
As many of you know, I originate from and grew up in the Soviet
Union. I immigrated with my husband and first born son to Athens,
Georgia in 1978 with a personal fortune of only 25 dollars. My
memory is that I felt like a “Blind Chicken”(russian expression)
and wondered how I could and would ever make the language, scientific
and social transitions required of me. I did not realize at the
time that I was lucky in many ways and that fortune had favored
me.
I knew only a single American scientist when I first arrived.
But I encountered many helpful people that were critical to my survival.
I also entered a social context within academia that differed in
several important ways from the system I had left behind. The American
academic system is characterized by a greater diversity, a greater
openness of thought and a fairer atmosphere of competition that
drives one to take intellectual risks and achieve more. At its
best, this environment also leads to a constant renewal of possibility,
a wealth of new ideas and a rich milieu of thoughtful exchange that
fosters both collective and individual progress. In America, I found
a place where prestige and intellectual and economic rewards were
all reasonable potential goals. Although I did not find the streets
paved with gold, I actually found the far greater treasure of opportunity.
Another social difference from which I profited is the greater
freedom for self determination as an American woman. Here, in the
US, it is possible, in concert with the right partner in life, to
build a domestic environment where the responsibility for hearth
and home is truly shared, so that family life also, can be based
on equality of opportunity. I could not have become the person
nor the scientist I am today, without the support of my husband
Alex and my children.
What I achieved also was due to the chance of time. I am a product
of this age of molecular biology with its rapidly expanding knowledge
bases and burgeoning information systems that has been made possible
by our technological growth. This lucky moment in history has allowed
all of us here today the privilege to be pioneers of new and fascinating
frontiers.
I have tried, as I built a career as an American scientist, to
foster and mentor those who will carry our field on into the future,
to be persistent in the pursuit of worthy goals and to change myself
and the system when and where there was anachronism, inefficiency
or unfairness. The award you have given me today, in a way validates
my past efforts and encourages a continued career shift in this
direction; a shift away from building a personal reputation toward
an acceptance of the extraordinary responsibility of leadership
within our field. But leadership does not occur in isolation.
We all lead and follow within a group, hopefully as a team. I am
continuously impressed by the breath and depth of scientific contributions
made by so many students and postdocs with whom I have had the pleasure
of working with. I now work toward many objectives on behalf of
a scientific community as well as my own personal interests. As
with my past work, my future work will depend upon the efforts of
many, more numerous than I can list, my students, postdocs, friends,
and colleagues, for whom I feel much gratitude and with whom I share
this moment and this award.
In his essay Tradition and Individual Talent, the poet T.S. Eliot
says, that no artist has his complete meaning alone. I would expand
that thought to include today’s scientist, who also cannot have
his or her complete meaning alone. I am proud today that my personal
efforts in science will over time cease to be mine alone and join
with a much larger stream of scientific thought that will live on
beyond any of us here today. It is the American context, which
at its best, celebrates diversity, the acceptance of new ideas and
the ever present possibility to start again that has allowed for
my success. And so, although you have singled me out for this award,
I acknowledge that it truly belongs to our time and a philosophical
tradition that I will continue to work within and seek to preserve.
Thank you.
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