Michael T. Madigan received a bachelor's degree in biology and education from Wisconsin State University at Stevens Point in 1971 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1974 and 1976, respectively, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Bacteriology. His graduate work involved study of hot spring phototrophic bacteria under the direction of Thomas D. Brock. Following three years of postdoctoral training in the Department of Microbiology, Indiana University, where he worked on phototrophic bacteria with Howard Gest, he moved to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he is now Professor of Microbiology. He has been a coauthor of Biology of Microorganisms since the fourth edition (1984) and teaches courses in introductory microbiology and bacterial diversity. In 1988 he was selected as the outstanding teacher in the College of Science, and in 1993 its outstanding researcher. In 2001 he was selected as the university's outstanding scholar. His research has dealt almost exclusively with anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria, especially those species that inhabit extreme environments. He has published 95 research papers, has coedited a major treatise on phototrophic bacteria, and is Chief Editor for North America of the journal Archives of Microbiology. His nonscientific interests include reading, hiking, tree planting, and caring for his dogs and horses. He lives beside a quiet lake about five miles from the SIU campus with his wife, Nancy, two dogs, Willie and Plum, and Springer and Feivel (horses).
John M. Martinko attended The Cleveland State University and majored in biology. As an undergraduate student he participated in a cooperative education program, gaining experience in several microbiology and immunology laboratories. He then worked for two years at Case Western Reserve University as a laboratory manager, conducting research on the structure, serology, and epidemiology of Streptococcus pyogenes. He did his graduate work at the State University of New York at Buffalo, investigating antibody specificity and antibody idiotypes for his M.A. and Ph.D. (1978) in microbiology. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York on the structure of major histocompatibility complex proteins. Since 1981, he has been in the Department of Microbiology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he is currently the Chair and Associate Professor. His research interests include the effects of growth hormone in the immune response and the development of immunodiagnostic tests for soybean brown stem rot disease. His teaching interests include undergraduate and graduate courses in immunology. He also teaches a portion of a general microbiology course, with responsibility for immunology, host defense, and infectious diseases. He lives in Carbondale with his wife, Judy, a high school science teacher, and their daughters, Martha and Helen.
Jack Parker received his bachelor's degree in biology and also received his doctoral degree in a biology program (Ph.D., Purdue University, 1973). His research project dealt with bacterial physiology and he completed his Ph.D. research while in the microbiology department at the University of Michigan. Following this, he spent four years studying bacterial genetics at York University in Toronto, Ontario. He has taught courses in bacterial genetics, general genetics, human genetics, molecular biology, and molecular genetics, and has participated in courses in introductory microbiology, medical microbiology, and virology primarily at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he is now a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Dean of the College of Science. His research has been in the broad area of molecular genetics and gene expression and has been focused most specifically on studies of how cells control the accuracy of protein synthesis. He is the author of approximately 50 research papers. His home is on the edge of the Shawnee National Forest in deep southern Illinois.
