Richard Lymn, creator of the muscle biology program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that funds major research at hospitals and universities, grew up in Queens County, New York City. It was a largely blue collar area, and Lymn was able to interact and work with skilled craftsmen, including his father, who was a master plumber. “It was rewarding and a pleasure to work with master craftsmen and ask them questions about how devices worked and why repairs were done in a particular way,” Lymn says. “This was very good training in analysis of cause and effect. I learned some patience and new approaches when efforts did not proceed as expected.”
The unusual neighborhood attracted many great teachers to its schools. Most had a lot of experience, and several held PhDs. Lymn remembers a crucial point in his education at Marie Curie Junior High School, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite. “The exploration of space became a great topic of conversation in school,” he recalls. “Students also had lively discussions about the crystal structures of myoglobin and hemoglobin and possible codes for genetic information. I was better in science and math at that time than in literary composition and responded with wonder at scientific advances.”
Science scholarships had become much more common by the late 1950s, when Lymn was in junior high and high school. “Colleges were trying to reach out to groups of people who had not been in their traditional cohorts,” he says. “Schools like Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and Stanford expanded the field of choices when selecting entering freshmen. I began expecting more as I approached high school graduation.” He had taken advanced courses in physics, chemistry, and math in high school, and looked forward to pursuing a career in science. He was excited to attend John Hopkins University when he received a scholarship from the school. “I decided to pursue studies in biophysics because the most interesting questions I could think of in science were related to biology and biological function.”
Two of Lymn’s professors at Hopkins, Francis “Spike” Carlson and William Harrington, recommended programs that he should look into for graduate school, and Lymn chose the biophysics program at the University of Chicago. There, at the beginning of his work in Ed Taylor’s laboratory, Lymn was trained by Birdwell Findlayson, a board-certified urologist whose goal was studying the kinetics of kidney stone formation. “He was acquiring a PhD in biophysics while practicing as a surgeon and developing some of the prototypic fast kinetics machinery that I ended up using and improving,” Lymn says.
Lymn’s PhD thesis on motile systems came together well. “The findings of the thesis appeared as three papers published in Biochemistry,” he says. A fourth paper described the chemical-quench rapid flow machine he invented to collect crucial new data. “The papers contained the data and interpretation that explained the biochemical cycle responsible for converting the energy of ATP hydrolysis into mechanical energy, what came to be called the Lymn-Taylor model,” he explains. The papers are in most basic textbooks on muscle contraction and became the basis for models of action by other molecular motors.
After completing his PhD studies, Lymn won a one-year British-American Heart Association Fellowship that enabled him to work with Hugh Huxley at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom. “With Hugh, I started to work on physiology and structure, expanding my skills in electron microscopy and learning fine details of X-ray crystallography,” Lymn explains. “It was a great challenge because to that point I had worked primarily in biochemistry.” His time at MRC was a highlight of his scientific career—out of only 400 people in the lab, six were Nobel Laureates. “Whenever I was sitting at a table having coffee or eating lunch, I typically had a very intensive seminar in some area of scientific research that I had known only slightly the day before,” he recalls.
His fellowship was extended to three years before he was recruited to work at the NIH in the Laboratory of Physical Biology with Richard Podolsky. He worked on improving prototypic electronic detectors of X-ray diffraction pattern changes that provided better time resolution of molecular events than film.
“The biggest challenge in my career was realizing that the research that I wished to pursue required a tremendous amount of coordination and fundraising,” he says. “This meant an almost complete shift to becoming a research director. I realized that I could have a greater impact by directing a program of muscle research.” In order to work toward his new goal, he enrolled in the Grants Associate Program at NIH that provided a year of training courses and specialized assignments to various programs throughout the government.
He then moved into a position as Health Scientist Administrator working with the research programs in the Division of Arthritis, Bone, and Skin Diseases. He continued to work with many active researchers to learn about their research questions and the strengths and shortcomings of various experimental techniques, in hopes of promoting cooperation and coordination among scientists. “My duties included research training and career development for the different subjects, and thus I interacted with biological scientists and clinical specialists including rheumatologists, dermatologists, and orthopedists. It was fascinating to learn about different cultures that supported the biomedical research endeavor,” Lymn says.
Most of his time at NIH was spent as a Program Director of Muscle Biology, responsible for organizing and expanding a program of research grants and contracts in the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to support research on skeletal muscle. “The program was formally established in 1983 and we convened a multi-disciplinary advisory group,” he explains. “We developed a list of opportunities and needs, including emerging genetic analysis and engineering techniques. It amazes me that the number of known skeletal muscle proteins has more than doubled since that time.” At the start of the program, it supported 75 grants in biophysics, biochemistry, and skeletal muscle development. “Twenty years later, with a budget of more than one hundred million dollars, the program supported 400 research and development grants, including expanded emphasis in the areas of exercise physiology, genetic and metabolic diseases of muscle, and treatments for people with muscle diseases,” Lymn says.
Lymn is now formally retired, but continues to work to promote research through The Lymn Foundation. The Foundation grants support to muscle-related conferences, which then provide awards to outstanding new investigators. Lymn also works with patient advocacy groups, such as the Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation, providing scientific and strategic planning advice. Lymn hopes that his lasting contribution will be one of encouragement and support for research. He says, “My advice to young people is that they should ask lots of questions and try to determine which ones will be fun and rewarding to answer. They should learn skills to then convince others of the excitement and importance of providing support to answer those questions.”