John Essigmann is Professor of Chemistry in the MIT Department of Chemistry and Professor of Toxicology in the MIT Division of Bioengineering and Environmental Health. John was brought up in Medford, MA, a suburb of Boston. He attended Northeastern University where his father, Martin Essigmann, taught for 45 years in the Electrical Engineering Department. John's sisters, Nancy and Joyce, and his mother, Rita, also received their undergraduate degrees from Northeastern. Joyce is now on the faculty at the University of New Hampshire.  Nancy is Assistant Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  At Northeastern, John met his future wife, Ellen; John and Ellen have two children, Amy and Nolan. 

During his undergraduate years, John worked in the chemistry group at Arthur D. Little, Inc., an industrial consulting company with longstanding ties to MIT. After graduation, he attended MIT and received his Ph.D. with Professor Gerald Wogan, a pioneer in the field of toxicology. In the Wogan laboratory, John applied his expertise at the chemistry-biology interface to study the metabolic activation and DNA binding characteristics of aflatoxin B₁ and related fungal toxins. These toxins are strongly associated with the lethal and cancer causing effects of natural products in developing areas of the world. Much of the work during this portion of his career was done in collaboration with Professor George Büchi, a chemist renown for his ability to make complex molecules by direct and elegant routes. George and Jerry, in addition to being professional mentors, became close friends of the Essigmann family owing to their mutual love of skiing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

As a faculty member at MIT, John used his abilities in chemistry to synthesize oligonucleotides containing DNA adducts formed by environmental toxins and chemotherapeutic drugs. His group developed a means to introduce these oligonucleotides into the genomes of viruses, which were then replicated inside cells. For a host of drugs and environmental carcinogens, the Essigmann group has defined the type and amount of mutations induced. They have also defined the genetic requirements for these mutational changes. Finally, they have applied similar techniques to probe the mechanisms by which the DNA damage formed by existing anticancer drugs cause cells to die. Some of this work has been in collaboration with Professor Stephen Lippard, a Chemistry Department colleague. The work of the Essigmann group has turned more recently toward the synthesis of novel toxins, some of which have anticancer potential. The latter work is in collaboration with Dr. Robert Croy, who also studied under Jerry Wogan.

John is a member of the American Chemical Society, American Association for Cancer Research, Society of Toxicology, American Society for Microbiology, and the Environmental Mutagen Society. He received the Campbell Fellowship for Graduate Study, and is a member of Sigma Xi and Phi Sigma. At MIT, he twice received the Graduate Student Council Teaching Award (1983 and 1984). He also received the School of Science Teaching Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Education (1996) and was appointed a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow for a ten year term (1997-2007). He has won a National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, which covered all research activities of his laboratory for the past decade. He is a past chair of the Gordon Conference on Mutagenesis and a five-time CaP-CURE Awardee. He has won the Arthur C. Smith Award (1998) and, most recently, the Mutation Research Award for Scientific Excellence (to be awarded at the 2000 American Chemical Society Annual Meeting). John is an alumnus and past Chair of the NIH Chemical Pathology Study Section, where he served with the indescribable Dr. Edmund Copeland. 

While the official home of the Essigmann family is in Brookline, they moved to the MIT campus in 1995 to take on a term as the faculty resident family in New House, one of the MIT residence halls. Situated along the Charles River, the terraces of New House have a spectacular view of the Boston skyline.  The residence hall was designed by the famous Spanish architect Joseph Lluis Sert.  New House is a vibrant, exceptionally diverse community. The Essigmanns play an active role in the social life of the residence hall, counsel students on personal and academic issues and serve as a liaison between the students and the faculty and administration of the Institute. Ellen, as did John, received her doctoral degree from MIT and is well acquainted with the Institute as a living and working environment. After leaving MIT as a student, Ellen worked for the next 15 years in industry. Her specialty is regulatory affairs, which is the process by which drugs and devices are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Ellen has been the Vice President for Regulatory Affairs at Parrs Pharmaceuticals and Director of Regulatory Affairs at T-Cell Sciences. When not at New House, the Essigmanns usually can be found at their second home on Mooselookmeguntic Lake in Maine. The Essigmann cabin is also a place where one can often find the Essigmann lab members, who enjoy the out of doors almost as much as the rigors of hot tubbing.

The picture of John on this page was taken by David Schaefer, husband of John's Administrative Assistant, Kim Bond Schaefer. Dave runs Chamberlain Schaefer Photography in Concord, MA. Dave has taken pictures of the Essigmanns for many years. Dave amazes me because, for some reason, our kids have always been at their highest energy level when we have their picture taken. That point notwithstanding, Dave always gets his shot.