Paola S. Timiras

Paola S. Timiras, born Paola Silvestri, (July 21, 1923, Rome – September 12, 2008, Berkeley, California) was an endocrinologist studying stress.

Background and education

Paola Silvestri was born on July 21, 1923, in Rome, Italy, just after Italy's takeover by Mussolini and his Fascist movement. Her father, a statistician and strong anti-Fascist, fled the following year to France, where his daughter visited often. Even as a girl, she dreamed of becoming a doctor, like her grandfather and uncle.

Silvestri obtained her medical degree from the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1947.[1] She married Romanian diplomat Nicholas Timiras and then moved with him to Canada where she studied experimental medicine and surgery at the Université de Montréal, gaining her doctorate in 1952.[2] During her postdoctoral work at the University of Montreal her supervisor was the endocrinologist Hans Selye.[3] One of Timiras's colleagues was Roger Guillemin.[4]

Timiras performed her doctoral research at the University of Montreal in the lab of Hans Selye, who had developed the first theories about the body's hormonal responses to stress.[3] At his suggestion, Timiras applied for and won a research fellowship that allowed her to work in his lab. There, she studied how stress influences the immune system through the effects of adrenocortical hormones.

Teaching and research

Before she finished her degree, the University of Montreal hired her as an assistant professor.[3][4] In 1954, she moved to Salt Lake City to pursue that line of inquiry in the pharmacology department at the University of Utah. In 1955, she joined the University of California, Berkeley physiology department as an assistant physiologist and was appointed to the faculty in 1958. She became a full professor in 1967.[5]

At UC Berkeley, Timiras studied the effects of caloric restriction on various hypothalamic nuclei, specifically the effects on cell density, estrogen receptor alpha immunoreactivity and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) receptor immunoreactivity. An automated imaging microscope system was developed in order to generate three-dimensional maps of the mouse hypothalamus.[6][7]

In the 1960s, Timiras developed a course on the physiology of aging, one of the first such courses in the United States.[4] In 2001, at age 78, Timiras became one of the founding members of the Center for Research and Education on Aging at the University of California, Berkeley,[5] for which she served as the first chair.[8]

Output and death

She contributed to or edited over 420 articles and 15 books before her death at the age of 85 of heart failure at on September 12, 2008, after putting in a full day’s work. Timiras had recently had heart valve replacement surgery.[3][5] Nicholas Timiras, her husband of nearly 50 years, who had earned a Ph.D. degree in Italian from UC Berkeley in 1978 (at age 66), died in 1996. They had a daughter and a son.

Honors and awards

Publications

Articles

According to the Web of Science her 5 most cited papers are:

  1. Woolley DE, Timiras PS (February 1962). "The gonad-brain relationship: effects of female sex hormones on electroshock convulsions in the rat". Endocrinology. 70 (2): 196–209. PMID 14008291. doi:10.1210/endo-70-2-196. 
  2. Terasawa E, Timiras PS (August 1968). "Electrical activity during the estrous cycle of the rat: cyclic changes in limbic structures". Endocrinology. 83 (2): 207–216. PMID 4874282. doi:10.1210/endo-83-2-207. 
  3. Woolley DE, Timiras PS (February 1962). "Estrous and circadian periodicity and electroshock convulsions in rats". The American Journal of Physiology. 202: 379–382. PMID 14008290. 
  4. Hudson DB, Valcana T, Bean G, Timiras PS (1976). "Glutamic Acid - Strong candidate as neurotransmitter of cerebellar granule cell". Neurochemical Research. 1 (1): 73–81. doi:10.1007/BF00965633. 
  5. Brizzee KR, Sherwood N, Timiras PS (July 1968). "A comparison of cell populations at various depth levels in cerebral cortex of young adult and aged Long-Evans rats". Journal of Gerontology. 23 (3): 289–97. PMID 5663608. doi:10.1093/geronj/23.3.289. 

Books

References

  1. ↑ Mary Rourke (Sep 23, 2008). "Paola Timiras, 1923 - 2008; Researcher studied aging". Los Angeles Times.
  2. ↑ Patricia Yollin (September 20, 2008). "Paola Timiras, UC expert on aging, dies". San Francisco Chronicle.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "In Memoriam: Paola S. Timiras". Retrieved 2010-05-01.
  4. 1 2 3 Ingfei Chen (December 4, 2002). "Ageless Activist". Science.
  5. 1 2 3 Sanders, Bob (2008-09-17). "Paola Timiras, researcher on aging, dies at 85". UC Berkeley News. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
  6. ↑ Yaghmaie, F; Saeed, O; Garan, SA; Freitag, W; Timiras, PS; Sternberg, H (2005). "Caloric restriction reduces cell loss and maintains estrogen receptor-alpha immunoreactivity in the pre-optic hypothalamus of female B6D2F1 mice". Neuroendocrinology Letters. 26 (3): 197–203. PMID 15990721.
  7. ↑ Garan SA, Neudorf J, Tonkin J, McCook LR, Timiras PS (December 2000). "Creating Three-Dimensional Neuronal Maps of the Mouse Hypothalamus Using an Automated Imaging Microscope System". Experimental Gerontology.
  8. ↑ "Center for Research and Education on Aging". University of California, Berkeley.
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