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to do research in the labs of other
professors. She died in 2008. Krigas
worked 29 years as a research
chemist and manager in the
polymer and plastics industry in
Chicago before retiring in 1999.
Both Van Camp and Krigas, as
well as Rosenberg, received honorary
degrees from MSU.
In the case of carboplatin,
the inventors were Rosenberg,
Hoeschele, Cleare and Van Camp.
Hoeschele went on to do research
and lecture at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, Engelhard (platinum)
Industries, Parke-Davis, the
University of Michigan and MSU.
Now partially retired, he lectures
at Eastern Michigan University.
He is also organizing Rosenberg’s
papers and considering writing a
biography of his mentor.
Cleare was a researcher with
Johnson Mathey platinum
company and went on to manage
research commercialization for
Columbia University. He is now
vice provost for research and director
of the Center for Technology
Transfer at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Rosenberg used his share of the
royalties to set up his own private
research facility next to his home
on College Road, just south of
the campus. He was living out
a fantasy formed in childhood.
In his oral history interview, he
said he was affected by a 1930s
movie, The Invisible Man.
“There was a scene . . . of a
wealthy man owning a large
mansion and having in the back
. . . a laboratory and some two or
three people working with him
on a particular research project.
I was struck with that. That sort
of sat in the back of my mind for
many, many years until, finally, I
put it into action.”
But if it was a fantasy, Barros
Research Laboratory became
a well-organized and staffed
facility in which Rosenberg was
able to investigate a wide range
of subjects that reflected his omnivorous
approach to science.
One project that got a fair
amount of press was a study of
the relationship of sunspots to
longevity. Rosenberg and his
major associate at Barros, David
Juckett, demonstrated that statistically,
a person’s lifespan is related
to the number of sunspots
that appeared in the year his or
her mother was born. It’s not as
crazy as it sounds considering
that sunspots are an indicator of
increased solar radiation.
Rosenberg was nominated for,
but never received the Nobel
Prize. He did receive other
prestigious prizes including the
Cain Memorial Award from
the American Association
of Cancer Research, and the
Charles F. Kettering Prize from
the General Motors Cancer
Research Foundation and the
Galileo Galilei Medal from the
University of Padua, Italy. MSU
endowed a chair in neuroscience
and the Rosenberg Fellowships
for young graduate students in
his honor.
One of Rosenberg’s most
ardent admirers is Gregory A.
Petsko, professor of chemistry
and biochemistry at Brandeis
University. Here’s how he sees
Rosenberg’s place in science:
“That he never won the
Nobel Prize is a testimony to the
stupidity of prize juries. That
his name isn’t a household word
along with Salk is a sad commentary
on our increasingly
anti-intellectual culture. But he
remains, for me, the hallmark of
what we should strive to be.”
To this day, cisplatin and
carboplatin, both discovered
serendipitously at MSU, remain
by far the world’s leading anticancer
agents.
Charlie Downs, retired MSU
science writer in media communications,
covered Barney Rosenberg
from 1962—when Rosenberg
arrived at MSU—until 1998,
when Downs retired from MSU.
RECOLLECTIONS OF BARNEY
By Tina Rosenberg
He’d spend hours sitting in the living
room, listening to classical music. Brahms
was his favorite, but also Beethoven, Bach,
Mozart, Dvorak. Later he tested his brain
by reciting 60 classical composers backwards
and forwards. He once advised me to buy my
Noah Greenberg
girls classical music CDs aimed at children.
If dad had a religion apart from science, it was classical music. He
thought it helped his mind and creativity. As a teenager I couldn’t
imagine doing nothing but listening to music. But now I realize that
he was doing something while he listened: He was thinking.
There used to be a small carnival with a carousel in Frandor, a shopping
center in Lansing. Almost every weekend, Dad would take me.
We had a routine—lunch at the Hamburger Heaven and then onto
the rides. Then we went to a vending machine with vertical rows of
Nehi sodas. He got root beer or orange, but I always got grape.
Dad ate like a kid. He loved candy, especially chocolate. He loved
fast food—Arby’s roast beef sandwich, McDonald’s fillet-o-fish and,
later on, Egg McMuffin. He loved the foods he grew up with in the
Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. He loved salami,
Nathan’s hot dogs, knishes, egg creams and more obscure Jewish
dishes such as p’tcha (jellied calves’ foot). He loved the Chinese food
of his youth—goopy chow mein and egg foo young, heavy on the
cornstarch. The worse the Chinese food, the more he liked it.
He not only considered these foods his favorites, he argued that
they were objectively the best foods ever made. This stuff was, of
course, impossible to find in Michigan at that time. But what Dad
didn’t realize was that by the time he was an adult, it was impossible
to find in New York as well. Nobody eats Chinese food like that
any more. People’s tastes have evolved, but dad’s never did. His were
frozen in the years of his youth.
Tina Rosenberg, Barney Rosenberg’s daughter, writes the online Fixes
column for the New York Times. She won the National Book Award
and Pulitzer Prize for her book The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s
Ghosts After Communism (Random House, 1995). Her most recent
book is Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
(W. W. Norton, 2011).
Page 26
Spring 2011 MSU Alumni Magazine