Background
Raymond Rappaport was born in May 1922 in North Bergen, New Jersey, to Raymond and Verna Karper Rappaport.
Raymond Rappaport was born in May 1922 in North Bergen, New Jersey, to Raymond and Verna Karper Rappaport.
He attended Bethany College in West Virginia. He finished his undergraduate work at Columbia University, and enrolled in a masters program in Zoology at the University of Michigan. He earned his masters degree in 1948, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University in 1952.
He did pioneering research using physical manipulations of cells to understand the mechanisms of cytokinesis, the process by which a cell"s cytoplasm is divided in two. His studies were interrupted by service during World World War II in the 5th Service Command, Anti-Aircraft and then in the Army Medical Corps. In a soil microbiology course, he met fellow masters student Barbara Nolan, and the two were wed in 1947.
Rappaport began his career as a professor at Union College in Schenectady, New York in 1952.
He taught for 35 years and conducted research at the college and for most summers at MDI Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove, Maine. Rappaport held several administrative positions at the MDI Biological Laboratory, including director (1956–1959), trustee, and president of the corporation (1979–1981).
Rappaport also architecturally designed some of the buildings at the laboratory, including several cottages, laboratory buildings, and the dining hall. Most of Rappaport"s research made use of echinoderm embryonic cells to address the mechanisms of cytokinesis in animal cells, experiments that focused on understanding how the cytokinetic furrow is positioned, and understanding the nature of the stimulus from the mitotic spindle that induced cortical furrowing.
Rappaport"s research was marked by unusually creative and simple experimental design, often involving physical manipulation of individual cells, for which he devised a number of custom microsurgical tools.
Rappaport recognized mechanistic redundancy in cytokinesis, which he characterized in an address at a 2004 conference with, "When I began working on cytokinesis, I thought I was tinkering with a beautifully made Swiss watch, but what I was really working on was an old Maine fishing boat engine: overbuilt, inefficient, never-failed and repaired by simple measures." Rappaport died December 14, 2010 in Bar Harbor, Maine at the age of 88.