Biography:Shyamala Gopalan

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Short description: Indian-American biomedical scientist and researcher (1938–2009)
Shyamala Gopalan
Shyamala Gopalan Harris died 2009.jpg
Born(1938-12-07)7 December 1938
Madras, Madras Presidency, British India
(present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India )
Died11 February 2009(2009-02-11) (aged 70)
Oakland, California, U.S.
Other namesGopalan Shyamala, G. Shyamala, Shyamala Gopalan Harris
Education
Known forProgesterone receptor biology and applications to breast cancer, Mother of vice president of the United States Kamala Harris
Spouse(s)
Donald J. Harris
(m. 1963; div. 1971)
Children
  • Kamala Harris
  • Maya Harris
Parent(s)P. V. Gopalan (father)
Rajam Gopalan (mother)
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisThe isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole wheat flour (1964)
Doctoral advisorRichard L. Lyman[1]

Shyamala Gopalan[lower-alpha 1] (December 7, 1938 – February 11, 2009) was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,[2] whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology.[3] She is the mother of Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, a lawyer and political commentator.[4]

Early life and education

Shyamala was born on December 7, 1938, in Madras, Madras Province, British India (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India ) to Rajam Gopalan and P. V. Gopalan, a civil servant. Her parents were from two villages near the town of Mannargudi in Madras Province.[5] According to The Los Angeles Times, "Gopalan was a Tamil Brahmin, part of a privileged elite in Hinduism’s ancient caste hierarchy".[5] According to Shyamala's brother, Balachandran, their parents were broad-minded in raising the children, all of whom led somewhat unconventional lives.[5] Her father began his professional life as a stenographer, rising through the ranks in the civil service, moving the family every few years between Madras, New Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta.[5]

A gifted singer of Carnatic music, Shyamala won a national competition in it as a teenager.[5] She studied for a BSc in Home Science at Lady Irwin College in Delhi. Her father thought the subject—which taught skills considered helpful in homemaking—was a mismatch for her abilities; her mother expected the children to seek careers in medicine, engineering, or the law.[5] In 1958, aged 19, Shyamala unexpectedly applied to a master's program in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley, and was accepted. Her parents used some of their retirement savings to pay her tuition and board during the first year.[5] Not having a phone line at home, they communicated with her after her arrival in the US by aerogram. She earned a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology at UC Berkeley in 1964.[5] Shyamala's dissertation, which was supervised by Richard L. Lyman,[1] was titled The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole wheat flour.[6]

Career

Shyamala conducted research in UC Berkeley's Department of Zoology and Cancer Research Lab. She worked as a breast cancer researcher at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Wisconsin. She worked for 16 years at Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University Faculty of Medicine. She served as a peer reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and as a site visit team member for the Federal Advisory Committee. She also served on the President's Special Commission on Breast Cancer. She mentored dozens of students in her lab. For her last decade of research, Shyamala worked in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[7]

Research

Shyamala's research led to advancements in the knowledge of hormones pertaining to breast cancer.[8][3] Her work in the isolation and characterization of the progesterone receptor gene in mice changed research on the hormone-responsiveness of breast tissue.[3]

Personal life

In the fall of 1962, at a meeting of the Afro-American Association—a students' group at Berkeley whose members would go on to give structure to the discipline of Black studies, propose the holiday of Kwanzaa, and help establish the Black Panther Party—Shyamala met a graduate student in economics from Jamaica, Donald J. Harris, who was that day's speaker.[9] According to Donald Harris, who is now an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University, “We talked then, continued to talk at a subsequent meeting, and at another, and another."[9] In 1963 they were married without following the convention of introducing Harris to Shyamala's parents beforehand or having the ceremony in her hometown.[5] In the later 1960s, Donald and Shyamala took their daughters, Kamala, then four or five years old, and Maya, two years younger, to newly independent Zambia, where Shyamala's father, Gopalan, was on an advisory assignment.[5] After Shyamala divorced Donald in the early 1970s, she took her daughters to India several times to visit her parents in Chennai, where they had retired.[5][10]

The children also visited their father's family in Jamaica as they grew up.[11]

Wanda Kagan, one of Kamala's high school friends in Montreal, described how after she told Kamala her stepfather was molesting her, Shyamala insisted she move in with them for her final year of high school.[12] Kagan said that Shyamala helped her navigate the system to get the support she needed to live independently of her family.

Death

Shyamala died of colon cancer in Oakland on February 11, 2009 at aged 70.[3] She requested that donations be made to the organization Breast Cancer Action.[3] Later in 2009, Kamala Harris carried her ashes to Chennai on the southeastern coast of peninsular India and scattered them in the Indian Ocean waters.[13]

Notes

  1. As per the cited sources and also the common naming conventions of her family, Gopalan Shyamala seems to be her legal name, while Shyamala Gopalan is a colloquial form to conform to Western name order.

Selected publications

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Gopalan, Shyamala (1964). The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole-wheat flour. University of California. 
  2. Tabasko, Michael (July–August 2021), "A Fortuitious Connection: Vice President Kamala Harris's Mother and Her NIH Collaborations", NIH Catalyst: A Publication About NIH Intramural Research (National Institutes of Health, Office of the Director) 29 (4): 1, 6, https://irp.nih.gov/sites/default/files/catalyst/v29i4-NIH-Catalyst_JULY-AUGUST-2021_3.pdf, "Gopalan eventually left Canada and returned to California to continue her work on the role of hormone receptors in breast-cancer development at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, California). She was awarded several NIH grants supporting her research through 2001, and her lab published their findings in 2006 (Cancer Res 66:10391–10398, 2006; DOI:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-06-0321). (Photo caption: Shyamala Gopalan Harris (left) in her lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.)" 
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "In Memoriam: Dr. Shyamala G. Harris" (in en-US). 2009-06-21. https://bcaction.org/2009/06/21/in-memoriam-dr-shyamala-g-harris/. 
  4. Cadelago, Christopher; Oprysko, Caitlin (August 11, 2020). "Biden picks Kamala Harris as VP nominee". Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/11/joe-biden-vp-pick-kamala-harris-393768. Retrieved August 31, 2020. 
  5. 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 Bengali, Shashank; Mason, Melanie (25 October 2019), "The progressive Indian grandfather who inspired Kamala Harris", Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-25/how-kamala-harris-indian-family-shaped-her-political-career, retrieved 24 April 2020 
  6. Shyamala, Gopalan (1964). The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole-wheat flour. UC Berkeley. http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b14935598~S1.  Note: last name and first name are listed swapped.
  7. "Dr. G. Shyamala". http://crea.berkeley.edu/shyamala-profile.shtml. 
  8. Carson, Susan (1985-06-21). "Men still dominate the scientific field". The Gazette (Montreal): pp. 27. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/27537248/the_gazette/. 
  9. 9.0 9.1 Barry, Ellen (13 September 2020), "How Kamala Harris's Immigrant Parents Found a Home, and Each Other, in a Black Study Group", New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/us/kamala-harris-parents.html, retrieved 13 September 2020 
  10. Finnegan, Michael (September 30, 2015). "How race helped shape the politics of Senate candidate Kamala Harris". Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-ca-harris-senate-20150930-story.html. Retrieved December 1, 2018. 
  11. Dolan, Casey (February 10, 2019). "How Kamala Harris' immigrant parents shaped her life—and her political outlook". The Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/10/kamala-harris-president-parents-shyamala-gopalan-donald-harris-berkeley/. Retrieved August 14, 2020. 
  12. "Kamala Harris's friend reacts to her historic win". CBC News. 2020-11-07. https://cbc.ca/player/play/1816926275902. Retrieved 2020-11-07. 
  13. Gettleman, Jeffrey; Raj, Suhasini (16 August 2020). "How Kamala Harris's Family in India Helped Shape Her Values". New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/kamala-harris-india.html. Retrieved 17 August 2020.