Remembering Professor Emerit Ann Palmenberg, renowned leader in virology

Ann C. Palmenberg, professor emerit of biochemistry and former director of the Institute for Molecular Virology, passed away Feb. 20 after a lengthy illness. She was 76 years old. A world-renowned virologist, Palmenberg spent much of her career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Over the years, she received numerous honors for her groundbreaking research and her strong advocacy for women and junior scientists.

Science and the pursuit of knowledge were part of Palmenberg’s life from an early age. Her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father an army engineer. Her great uncle, a chemist, installed a lab for his water-testing business in her childhood home in suburban New York. Palmenberg and her brother would observe him working and later conducted their own experiments in the lab. But it was witnessing science’s life-saving potential when the polio vaccine was administered at her school that propelled Palmenberg toward her future career.

“At seven years old, I wanted to make vaccines and work for Lederle (Laboratories, an early producer of an oral polio vaccine),” she said in an autobiographical article published in the Annual Review of Virology.

In 1970, she received her undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and began graduate studies in biochemistry at UW–Madison, where she specialized in RNA virology and protein biochemistry. Palmenberg earned her doctorate in 1975 and spent four years in Zurich as a postdoctoral fellow before returning to UW–Madison as a postdoctoral researcher.

Soon after her return to Madison, Palmenberg received her first grant from the National Institutes of Health. With postdoctoral researchers ineligible to receive the funding, she accepted the grant along with a promotion to scientist. There were few female faculty members in basic research departments at UW–Madison and nationally. Palmenberg remained in a scientist position at UW–Madison building her own lab for the next eight years.

After much discussion, Palmenberg joined the faculty in 1987. A decade later, she was directing the Institute for Molecular Virology as a full professor in the Department of Biochemistry.

Palmenberg was a trailblazer in virology and infectious respiratory disease research. A renowned expert on the biochemistry of picornaviruses, she studied how human rhinoviruses such as the common cold contribute to asthma. By exploring the genomes of viruses and their physical structures, she solved the atomic structure of a cold virus linked to severe asthma and respiratory infections in children — research that paved the way for potent new therapies and antivirals against virus-induced asthma.

She was the first to describe a way to make new types of live virus vaccines by using genetic material called recombinant complementary DNA. Her discovery and application of viral internal ribosome entry sites is the basis for nearly all pharmaceutical drug production. And she developed panels of new antivirals, vaccines and highly sought-after reagents used today in thousands of research labs around the world.

Though Palmenberg was known to describe her own work as “taking viruses apart and putting them back together,” that description fails to capture her brilliance as a scientist, her influence on virology and public health, and her unbridled advocacy and support of junior faculty and women in science.

She dedicated countless hours to organizing conferences of the American Society for Virology. She often set aside time to read and provide feedback on grant applications drafted by junior faculty. A few weeks before a conference, she would prioritize critiquing graduate students’ presentations. She regularly advocated for those with less knowledge of academia than she and was known for bestowing advice.

Elected President of the American Society for Virology in 2007, Palmenberg was a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Inventors. Among numerous awards from UW–Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, she was named Roland Rueckert Professor of Biochemistry and a recipient of the Biological Sciences Hilldale Award. In recognition of her influential research and years of devoted professional service, she received the 2024 Wolfgang & Patricia Joklik Distinguished Service Award from the American Society for Virology. Multiple awards were established in her name during her lifetime, including the American Society for Virology’s Ann Palmenberg Junior Investigator Award.

Enthusiastic, jovial and persistent, Palmenberg rarely did anything halfway, at work or at home. She made it her mission to find ways to connect with everyone she met — and if that meant an opportunity to share the coolest thing she did in the lab that week, all the better. She was fond of an excellent gin and tonic, and she found delight in tending to her cherry tree and raspberry bushes at home (which she used to make homemade jams that she then shared with colleagues).

Among her many passions, Palmenberg also followed college athletics closely. She could be found in the stands at Badgers football and basketball games or simply watching a game at home, a cold drink in hand. For over 10 years as a graduate student and into her early career as faculty, she pitched semi-pro fastpitch softball, stopping only due to the demands of faculty life.

In 2011, Palmenberg chose to downsize her lab after being diagnosed with Stage 4 T-cell lymphoma. Though the illness sapped her of strength and mobility, she remained committed to her research. She retired in 2023.

Said Palmenberg, “Whether you just threw a third strike or a home-run mistake, the subsequent pitch is the one you now need to face. Perform, or do not; the deed is yours alone. Success or failure is measured only at the end of the game, when those individual events are added in sequence. Science is similar. Define the next thing you need to do for any given situation and then execute it. If you screw up (don’t do that too often), just throw the next pitch and make that one count.”

Members of the campus community are welcome to share tributes and memories of Palmenberg and their condolences at www.cressfuneralservice.com. In lieu of flowers, please consider contributing to the Ann Palmenberg Professorship in Virology Fund, the UW Health Carbone Cancer Center, and the American Society for Virology Ann Palmenberg Junior Investigator Award Fund.