Biology Emeriti Faculty

Following completion of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry at the University of Natal in South Africa, Professor Emeritus Dennis N. Luck  studied at Oxford University in England where he earned a D.Phil. degree in 1966. He returned to South Africa for 30 months, and then emigrated to the U.S.A. After a stint of teaching and research at the University of Texas in Austin, he joined the faculty at Oberlin College in 1972. He taught Cell and Molecular Biology, a required course for all biology, neuroscience, and biochemistry majors, and upper division courses in molecular genetics, genes and genetic engineering. In the summer of 1982 Luck was the first Oberlin professor to teach a course at Shanxi Agricultural University in Taigu in the People’s Republic of China. Under the auspices of the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, he gave 30 lectures on nucleic acid biochemistry. He was the recipient of the Oberlin College Distinguished Teaching Award in the Natural Sciences in 2001. Luck’s research interests lie in the field of molecular endocrinology, and have been supported by seven grants from the National Science Foundation. He engineered E. coli to synthesize recombinant bovine prolactin, a mammalian protein hormone. As a result, he was invited to present the results of this work, which was done in collaboration with Professor Michael Smith, at the Fifth International Congress on Prolactin held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1988. Professor Smith received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993. Back in 1978, at the time of his first sabbatical, Luck was awarded an Eleanor Roosevelt International Cancer Fellowship by the International Union Against Cancer of Geneva, Switzerland, to study at Oxford. Major internal awards included two Research Status appointments, an H.H. Powers travel grant and a McCandless curriculum development fellowship. He has always involved a number of Oberlin students in his research. Luck retired in 2006.