Gladys (Gaby) Friedler

Born September 7, 1926 in Lewiston, Maine, a cotton manufacturing city, home of Bates Mills and Bates College. My father, a self-educated German immigrant in 1913, started the first drycleaning/dyeing plant in Maine. Without any formal education beyond grade 4, he enrolled in advanced chemistry classes at Bates College to extend his knowledge of dyeing fabrics. He encouraged my education, from the time I was a small child, with the subtle but powerful message and encouragement that I could and should do whatever I wished.

My undergraduate education was at the University of Maine. I graduated with a BA in Zoology, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1947. My first summer in Woods Hole and the MBL was in 1949 as a graduate student in Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania. I have returned each summer since then whenever possible and was a member of the MBL Corporation for several years. My intent at Penn was to pursue studies for a PhD but I left with an MA. The environment at Penn was, not surprisingly, male-dominated and less than hospitable at that time. This realization was only in retrospect years later. Shortly before leaving, I was told by a professor (not my advisor who continually altered my research focus) that I could have received a PhD with but six months additional work. This information unfortunately was received too late to pursue.

The next several years were spent in research labs at various institutions including Johns Hopkins, Jefferson, and Harvard Medical Schools. Finally I recognized the necessity of an advanced degree to do independent research. I received a PhD in Medical Sciences at Boston University School of Medicine in 1968. Following a postdoc in Pharmacology at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center and a Research Fellowship in Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Lying-In Hospital, I accepted a faculty appointment at Boston University School of Medicine in Pharmacology and Psychiatry in 1992 and remained until retirement in 1999.

In 1991, I was awarded a fellowship at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the largest multidisciplinary institute for women in the US. Until that time, my professional contacts were primarily male professors and colleagues. I wondered how "artificial" it would seem to be in an exclusively single sex community. How naive and uninformed! It was the most significant, reinforcing and intellectually stimulating environment I have ever had the privilege to be a part of. It was life-changing. My area of research, a spin-off of my dissertation, was on the role of paternal exposure to dependence-producing drugs on fetal, postnatal, and subsequent generational development. Both the questions and findings were highly controversial. The recent acceptance of the important role of epigenetic influences (previously scorned as Lamarkian) finally led to general acknowledgement of the significance and validity of these studies, forty years later! A book now in progress documents this history.

I have always been involved in music: dancing, singing, performing and sung with classical choruses, including the Woods Hole Cantata Consort and was President at its 25th Anniversary. In Philadelphia I first performed as a folk singer/guitarist and continued until I returned to graduate school in 1962. Recently I have taken classes in acting/performing cabaret music. It is great fun and I am ready for Broadway although they are likely not ready for me!