Dr. Anderson at work in the laboratory. - Contributed

Barbara Nelson, Contributor

Jamaican-born Howard University biology professor, Winston A. Anderson, is one of the few individuals who can confidently say that his life has been well lived.

In 2006, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), a non-profit medical research organisation, presented 20 accomplished United States (U.S.) researchers from diverse fields, including genetics, biochemistry, plant pathology, bioengineering, neuroscience, biophysics and computational biology with a US$1million grant each. Winston Anderson was one of the researchers.

They were considered "True pioneers - not only in their research but in their creative approaches and dedication to teaching," said HHMI president Thomas R. Cech, himself a Nobel prize winner in chemistry (1989).

While he could have spent the grant on anything, Professor Anderson had other ideas. "Howard University is deficient in so many things," he commented. "I plan to expand the scientific research and learning facilities there. I will also place certain honour students who are at Howard in mentoring programmes and encourage them to follow research careers."

Importance of mentoring

Because of his own experience, he stresses the importance of mentoring in a person's career. "All the way from the time I came to Howard until I went to study in France, there were professors who nurtured me. Throughout the whole academic experience I have appreciated the value of nurturing."

He was only 17 years old when he went to the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., after completing the Higher Schools Certificate at Calabar High School in Jamaica in 1958. Like many young men of that era, he planned to study dentistry at Howard.

"Like many of those young men we had to have jobs - sometimes very menial jobs - to survive. Those young men were strong and very courageous," he said.

He changed his course of study at the university and earned a bachelor of science degree in zoology in 1962, and a master of science degree, also in zoology, in 1963.

Anderson studied in the U.S. at a time when a maelstrom of civil rights activities was mushrooming. The Voting Rights Bill was taking centre stage; Brown versus the Board of Education; the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for jobs and freedom (the largest demonstration seen in the nation's capital until that time); the rhetoric of civil rights and black power advocates - all these created an impression on the young man.

"Howard University was a very important freedom arena at that time," he recalled.

The slave museum

But young Anderson was not a stranger to race-consciousness. His mother, who died last year at the age of 99 years, "was a very bright person who was very conscious of the heroes - especially of Marcus Garvey and Norman Manley." She created a positive impression on him and many young men.

So when he was exposed to the drama of the upheavals taking place in the U.S., he knew he had to be involved. One outcome of the experience was that he began collecting items of historical significance related to the African-American experience. Later, he and his older brother, Bernard, a surgeon at D.C. General Hospital, bought an acre of land in Sandy Spring, Maryland, where they later co-founded the Sandy Spring Slave Museum and African Art Gallery.

Sandy Spring was home to the earliest free black community in Montgomery County, Maryland. It was an important 'stop' on the Underground Railroad, and was settled by the Quakers, who either did not own slaves or set them free before 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was made as the U.S. approached its third year of civil war.

"It took between three and four years to build the museum," Professor Anderson reminisced. "Now, about 3,000 people visit it each year."

Further studies

But, back to the young student at Howard University. He won the Beta Kappa Chi Award for academic excellence at Howard and, on the advice of his teachers, looked at a career in biomedical science.

They also encouraged him to attend Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, an Ivy League College founded in 1764 by the brothers John and Moses Brown.

Winston Anderson studied cell biology at Brown and during his graduate school years (1963 to 1966) published 10 papers in prestigious journals. He still contributes to the journals, usually with co-authors.

He earned a doctoral degree in biomedical sciences from Brown in 1966.

Then followed what he considers "the most productive period" of his life, when he spenttwo years in France as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Paris.

In 1968, he served as a postdoctoral fellow with the renowned Don Fawcett, the pioneer in cell biology, at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

His next move was to the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine as an assistant professor. While there, he received the Anne Langer Award for Cancer Research, for his studies of breast cancer and uterine physiology. He also earned the first Distinguished Teacher Award given at the Pritzker School.

He began teaching at Howard University in 1975.

Consuming passion

With his many outstanding achievements, however, his consuming passion has been his efforts to improve undergraduate education for minorities in black colleges. Thus, part of his plan to use the $1million award is to select students from among his honours science undergraduates to be part of various mentoring programmes at a number of research centres. He also wants to have their work published in peer-reviewed journals.

Professor Anderson is looking further afield to global education. He envisions summer exchange programmes that will take students in the U.S. to countries in Africa where they will do research on tropical diseases, including malaria. They will also study the use of indigenous plants for medicine.

"I am nearing the end of the academic road," the soft-spoken professor told Outlook. "But it has been good. I have seen about 28 of my students get their Ph.D.s!"

As he said in a recent interview with the magazine Current Biography, "By influencing the lives of students, you will receive rewards that money cannot buy."

Professor Anderson and his wife, Carol, have two daughters, Laura and Lea, and a son, Michael.