Carthage welcomes back to campus alumnus Dr. John (Jack) Johnson, '67, for the first Natural Sciences Colloquium of the 2011-12 academic year.

Dr. Johnson is a world-renowned virologist and professor of molecular biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. He will present a talk titled "Biophysical Studies of Virus Particles and their Maturation: Insights into Elegantly Programmed Nano-Machines." The presentation will be held at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 8, in the Niemann Theatre. All are invited; refreshments will be served. A student reception will be held at 4 p.m.

Dr. Johnson graduated from Carthage in 1967 with a degree in chemistry, and earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Iowa State University in 1972. He spent 20 years as a faculty member in Purdue University's Department of Biological Sciences, receiving the Faculty Research Award from Purdue’s chapter of Sigma Xi in 1989. He joined The Scripps Research Institute in 1995. In 2007, he received the Carthage Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award. In 2008, he was named an American Chemical Society (San Diego Section) Distinguished Scientist.

Dr. Johnson has spent the past 40 years studying the structure and function of viruses. His work includes high-resolution crystallography and electron microscopy of viruses in various states of assembly and maturation as well as dynamic studies of virus transitions. By investigating a variety of viruses with genomes stored as single-stranded and double-stranded RNA and as double-stranded DNA, he has developed evolutionary relationships in these functional areas based on structure, genotype and phenotype.

Dr. Johnson's presentation kicks off the 2011-12 Natural Sciences Colloquium Series, which this year will include broad, interdisciplinary seminars and presentations of student and discipline-specific research. See the 2011-12 schedule.