Dorothy May Skinner's Obituary
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pg 10e L5
Dorothy Skinner, a resident of Falmouth since 1999, died on February 12 2005 from complications
of Parkinson's disease.
Dorothy was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Watertown High School,
where she was Best Girl Athlete. At Tufts University she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in her
junior year and was on the women's basketball team and a member of the Marlins, an aquatic
ballet group. She earned her B.A. in 1952. For two years she was Assistant Dean at Tufts. The
Dean being unwell, at age 23 Dorothy was given the chief of Admissions responsibility for
admitting two classes to the School of Arts and Sciences.
The following year she was admitted to the Biology Department at Harvard. Her Ph.D. work there
introduced her to the biology of Crustacea, particularly crabs, which became the focus area
for her research career. At the time when she entered the field of biology, the importance and
the functions of DNA were just being recognized and analyzed by molecular biologists, and she
embarked on postdoctoral training in these areas at Harvard, Yale, and Brandeis. Her first
independent position was in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at N.Y.U. Medical School,
where she met her husband John Cook, a mammalian physiologist. After their marriage they went
to the Biology Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee where they worked in
their respective fields until retirement more than 30 years later.
At Oak Ridge, she introduced molecular approaches to the investigation of numerous crustacean
species, identifying unusual properties of the DNA of these animals as well as demonstrating
special characteristics of the DNA that make it susceptible to mutation. She developed new
insights into regeneration of new limbs when the old ones were damaged or lost, and she
devised new methods for triggering crustacean growth and studying their hormones. Of her
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, twenty-four in all, many now
hold significant positions in academia or in research institutions.
Her other professional activities included editorships on editorial boards of four scientific
journals and membership on review panels for the National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes of Health. She also was an officer in several scientific societies. Several summers
she taught at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Throughout her
life she devoted a significant effort to promoting the equal treatment of women in
science and was elected to the governing council of the Association for Women in Science.
In 1993 she received a Scholar-Athlete Award from Tufts and in 1994 she was honored with the
Distinguished Service Award from the Tufts Alumni Association. That same year she was also
honored by the Crustacean Society with an Award for Excellence in Research, the citation being
for a lifetime of investigative achievements and for mentoring new trainees in She and her
husband developed an interest in 20th century art and filled their home with a substantial
collection of painting, prints, and sculpture.
She is survived by her husband, a sister Marjorie Fralick of Belmont, MA, and a second sister
Joyce S. Hirtle of Lexington, MA.
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