astronomy

Philip Hanawalt

Philip Hanawalt is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Philip Hanawalt rather than just read about it. In short: Philip C. Hanawalt (born 1931) is an American biologist who discovered the process of repair replication of damaged DNA in 1963.

Key takeaways

Philip Hanawalt belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Philip Hanawalt to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Philip Hanawalt from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Philip C. Hanawalt (born 1931) is an American biologist who discovered the process of repair replication of damaged DNA in 1963. He is also considered the co-discoverer of the ubiquitous process of DNA excision repair along with his mentor, Richard Setlow, and Paul Howard-Flanders. He holds the Dr. Morris Herzstein Professorship in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, with a joint appointment in the Dermatology Department in Stanford University School of Medicine.

Early life and education Philip C. Hanawalt was born on 1931 in Akron, Ohio. He was raised in Midland, Michigan. Having an interest in electronics from youth, Hanawalt earned an honorable mention in the 1949 Westinghouse Science Talent Search, receiving a scholarship to attend Deep Springs College. Hanawalt eventually transferred to Oberlin College where he received his B.A. degree in physics in 1954. He received his M.S. degree in physics from Yale University in 1955. Hanawalt also received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Yale University in 1959. His doctoral thesis advisor was Richard Setlow. He undertook three years of postdoctoral study at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and at the California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at Stanford in 1961.

DNA repair

DNA repair is the process by which all living cells deal with damage to their genetic material. Such damage occurs as a consequence of exposure to environmental radiations and genotoxic chemicals, but also to endogenous oxidations and the intrinsic instability of DNA. Hanawalt and his colleagues discovered a special pathway of excision repair, called transcription-coupled repair, which is targeted to expressed genes, and he studies several diseases characterized by defects in DNA repair pathways. DNA repair is important for protecting against cancer and some aspects of ageing in humans, and its deficiency has been implicated in the etiology of a number of hereditary diseases.

Career In 1965 Hanawalt became associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford, and was promoted to professor in 1970. He has served on the Board of Trustees and is now an Honorary Trustee of Oberlin College. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from Oberlin and the Doctor Honoris Causa from both the University of Seville, Spain, and the University of the Bío-Bío, Chile. Hanawalt was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1989, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, and he is a Foreign Associate of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and as a Senior Editor for the journal, Cancer Research. He has served on the Board of Directors for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He has served on many editorial boards and advisory committees in academia and government. He has trained 29 Ph.D. students at Stanford and many postdoctoral researchers. Thirty-five different countries are represented among the participants in his research group over the past 48 years.

Awards and honors Hanawalt won the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Northern California chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1991, and the Peter and Helen Bing Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. He has won annual research awards from the American Society for Photobiology and the Environmental Mutagen Society (EMS) in 1992, from which he also received the annual Student Mentoring Award. He won the International Mutation Research Award for Excellence in Scientific Achievement in 1987, and the Princess Takamatsu Cancer Foundation Annual Lectureship in Japan in 1999 and he was more recently a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University. He has served as president of the EMS and was the president/organizer of the 9th International Conference on Environmental Mutagens (ICEM) in San Francisco in 2005. In 2009 he delivered the Keynote Lecture for the 10th ICEM in Florence, Italy. He has organized many meetings on DNA repair, including the first international conference in this field, at Squaw Valley, CA, in 1974, and subsequent Gordon Conferences on Mutagenesis and on Mammalian DNA Repair.

Personal life Hanawalt is married to Graciela Spivak and has 4 children, the first two children from a previous marriage to Joanna Thomas Hanawalt: David, Steve, Alex, and famed cartoonist and television producer, Lisa Hanawalt. Hanawalt lives in Palo Alto, California.

Notes

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Philip Hanawalt

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Philip Hanawalt claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Philip Hanawalt before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Philip Hanawalt ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Philip Hanawalt

In research: Philip Hanawalt appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Philip Hanawalt in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Philip Hanawalt is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1931 births, 21st-century American biologists, Academic staff of the University of Osaka, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Philip Hanawalt outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Philip Hanawalt in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Philip Hanawalt means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Philip Hanawalt out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Philip Hanawalt in simple terms?

Philip C. Hanawalt (born 1931) is an American biologist who discovered the process of repair replication of damaged DNA in 1963.

Why does Philip Hanawalt matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Philip Hanawalt?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Philip Hanawalt.