Joe Neilands

John Brian "Joe" Neilands (September 11, 1921 – October 23, 2008) was a Canadian-born American biochemist and professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1951 until his retirement in 1993.

Early life and education Neilands was born on September 11, 1921, in Glen Valley (near Vancouver), British Columbia, to Thomas Abraham Neilands and Mary Rebecca Neilands (née Harpur), both of whom immigrated from Northern Ireland. He received his undergraduate degree from the Ontario Agricultural College (now part of the University of Guelph) in 1944, his master's degree from Dalhousie University in 1946, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in biochemistry in 1949. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Karolinska Institutet's Medical Nobel Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1958, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow; One of his doctoral students was Kary Mullis, who received a Ph.D. under his supervision in 1973 and won a Nobel Prize in 1993.

Research Neilands' main area of research was microbial iron transport. His early research (from 1950 to 1952) focused on enzymes, including the isolation of cytochrome c from different sources, and on identifying its properties. He also protested against the Vietnam War and the Gulf War on the UC Berkeley campus.

Death Neilands died on October 23, 2008, at the age of 87, after briefly battling a rare form of tuberculosis.