Joyce Nao Takahashi (a.k.a. Joyce T. Doi) has been a member of the ACS for 60 years. We are pleased to be able to honor her at our 2017 Flavors of Chemistry event. We asked Joyce to write a summary of her years with ACS:
I joined the student affiliates of ACS when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Initially I was planning to be a high school science teacher, but my fascination with chemistry led me to graduate school at UCLA where I received the doctorate in 1960. (Out of our graduate class of 24, three of us were women, and I was the only woman who earned a Ph. D. I attribute that to the wisdom and encouragement of my graduate advisor, Professor Saul Winstein.)
After doing postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, I was appointed Lecturer at UC Davis in 1965, later I became an Adjunct Professor in 1993 and Emerita in 1995. I am coauthor of 35 research publications; the work at UC Davis was done in collaboration with Professor W. Kenneth Musker. In 1990 I received an award, which I used to work with enzymes in the laboratory of Professor George Kenyon at UCSF
I carried a regular teaching load at UC Davis and was invigorated by the students in the classroom as well as in the laboratory. I am author of an organic chemistry laboratory manual (1986), (which was still in use at UC Davis 20 years later) and coauthor of an audiovisual course published by the ACS in 1982.
