Klinman was born April 17, 1941, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] When Klinman was two years old, her biological father left the family.[2] Klinman's mother sold her house and possessions and moved with Klinman to Miami Beach, Florida, for a time, before returning to Philadelphia to find work.[10] Klinman's mother then remarried, and so she was raised by her mother and stepfather.[2] Neither her mother nor stepfather graduated from college, but her stepfather attended Drexel University for two years but dropped out due to the Great Depression, and later found work selling furniture.[2] Klinman was initially interested in ballet, but her interest in chemistry was piqued by her high school chemistry teacher.[2] She received a partial scholarship from her high school, Overbrook High School, to attend college, graduating second in her class.[2] Klinman decided to enroll in the University of Pennsylvania's College for Women, despite pressure from her family to become a lab technician and get married.[2]
Education and training
Beginning in 1958, Klinman studied chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn).[10] While in college, Klinman was a laboratory technician at the Eldridge R. Johnson Foundation for Research in Medical Physics at UPenn. She graduated with her A.B. in Chemistry in 1962.[1] Klinman applied to medical and graduate school, and received acceptances to both.[2] In 1962, Klinman enrolled in the Chemistry graduate program at New York University (NYU).[2] Klinman credits her time at NYU for "opening [her] eyes to the excitement and beauty of organic reaction mechanisms."[10] After a year in New York City, she moved back to Philadelphia, and enrolled at UPenn for graduate studies.[2] Working in the laboratory of physical organic chemist Prof. Edward R. Thornton, Klinman studied the hydrolysis kinetics of benzyl-substituted imidiazoles.[11] She graduated with her Ph.D. in 1966.[12]
In 1972, Klinman was promoted to an independent staff scientist, equivalent to an Assistant Professorship, at the Institute for Cancer Research.[10] In 1974, she joined the University of Pennsylvania as an Assistant Professor of Biophysics.[19]
In 1978, she moved to University of California, Berkeley as an Associate Professor in Chemistry,[15] the first female faculty member in the physical sciences at UC Berkeley.[20] She is currently the Professor of the Graduate School at the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at the University of California, Berkeley.[12] She also served the Chancellor's Professor for University of California Berkeley.[21][22] She currently serves as the Professor of the Graduate School.[23]
Her group has discovered that room temperature hydrogen tunneling occurs among various enzymatic reactions, such as enzymatic C-H cleavage,[10] and clarified the dynamics of tunneling process through data analysis. They have also discovered the quino-enzymes, a new class of redoxcofactors in eukaryotic enzymes.[24][25]
2018 Penn Chemistry Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Pennsylvania[41]
Personal life
Judith Klinman was married to Norman R. Klinman, who later became a Professor of Immunology and Microbial Science at The Scripps Research Institute.[14] The two met at the University of Pennsylvania, and were married while Klinman was completing her Ph.D.[2][10] They had two children together, Andrew and Douglas.[2][10] Andrew was born while Klinman was in graduate school (born 1964–1966), and Douglas when she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel (born in 1967).[2][10] She and Norman divorced in 1978, at the time of her laboratory's move to UC Berkeley.[2][10]
Judith Klinman later married Mordechai Mitnick, a grassroots organizer who later established a psychotherapy practice in Oakland.[10][42][43][44] They raised four children together: Alexandra, Joshua, Andrew, and Douglas.[10]