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Virginia Mayo Fiske Virginia Fiske was educated at Mount Holyoke (B.A. and M.A.) and Radcliffe (Ph.D.), and began her Wellesley career in 1944 as an instructor in the Department of Zoology. During her career Fiske taught a wide range of courses, served as a class dean on two different occasions, chaired the Department of Biological Sciences , and was an active and respected member of the College community. Following her retirement in 1975 as Ellen A. Kendall Professor of Biological Sciences, Fiske continued to work in her research laboratory at the College well into the late 1980s.
Virginia Fiske was very proud of the students that she taught, and had a broad view of her role as an educator. Her teaching extended beyond the classroom into the research laboratory, where her student researchers were true collaborators. Her early work was focused on the pituitary gland, particularly on the role of light in the functioning of this gland. In the late 1950ís she and her students began to study similar effects on the pineal gland which, at the time, had not been characterized nearly as well as the pituitary. In 1960 she published a simple but elegant experiment that redirected most pineal research. In the 1960s it became clear that one function of the pineal was the secretion of melatonin, and Fiske also made significant contributions in this research.
As a result of her contributions to endocrinology, Virginia Fiske received a number of awards and honors, including an honorary doctorate from her undergraduate alma mater. In 1975 she was named a fellow of the American Association f that has become such an important part of the education of many Wellesley students. As Professor Coyne noted in her article: As a former student and collaborator, Judith Pound Swazey '61 exclaimed "We owe that woman so much." Written by Flick Coleman
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The
pineal gland is a pea-sized structure located within the brain in
humans (though in some species of lizard it is located on the forehead).
Often referred to as "the third eye" and, by Descartes,
as the "seat of the soul," the biological function of
the pineal remained obscure until well into the 20th century. Today
the pineal gland is understood to be involved in many regulatory
processes related to sleep, body temperature and female reproduction.
Our Person of the Week , Virginia Mayo Fiske (1910-1999), carried
out some of the groundbreaking research leading to our increased
understanding of the function of the pineal gland. This work was
done while Fiske was a professor of biological sciences at Wellesley.
