Raquel Rotman Sussman Collection

Dr. Raquel (Rotman) Sussman was born in Santiago, Chile on October 22, 1921. She earned an undergraduate degree in science in 1944 from the Department of Viruses at the Instituto Bacteriologico de Chile replicating W.M. Stanley's work on the crystallization of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). In 1946, she applied to the Institute of International Education for a scholarship to continue her studies on the chemical nature of viruses in the United States. Sussman went to Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, studying and working as a research assistant with Alfred D. Hershey. She met Maurice Sussman, Sol Spiegelman's graduate student, in the same year. She returned to the United States to become Spiegelman's graduate student, and to marry Maurice in 1948. Both Sussmans followed Spiegelman to Minneapolis in 1948.

In 1950, the Sussmans moved to Evanston, Illinois. Maurice had accepted an appointment as an instructor and established a laboratory in the Biology Department at Northwestern University.

In 1958, the family movied to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Maurice was able to secure another professorship, Sussman received no academic appointment.

In 1961, the Sussmans took a sabbatical year to work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Sussman worked with François Jacob studying repressors of lysogenic viruses. Sussman co-wrote the paper "Sur la nature du represseur assuran l’immunite des bacteries lysogenes" (1962) with Jacques Monod and Jacob prior to their Nobel Prize win in 1965.

In 1973, Sussman accepted an invitation position as Martze Bahir (equivalent to Associate Professor) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of Molecular Biology at Hadassah Medical School. She studied the phenomenon of SOS repair in bacteria in her own laboratory, citing Evelyn Witkin as an inspiration for this work.

Two and a half years later, in 1975, the Sussmans moved their labs to the University of Pittsburgh. Sussman continued her work with lambda repressors in Larry Grossman's laboratory. Sussman retired early from the University of Pittsburgh at the age of 66 in 1987 and moved with her husband to Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Sussman became an Associate Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in the same year, working until 1997.

Maurice died on July 12, 2016. Sussman passed away on January 29th, 2020.