The School of Molecular and Cellular Biology has received a generous gift from George and Tamara Mitchell of Sidney, Illinois, to create two endowed chairs in the Department of Biochemistry.

The Gregorio Weber Endowed Chair in Biochemistry is named in honor of the late University of Illinois professor and researcher whose specialties included fluorescence, spectroscopy, and protein chemistry. Born in Argentina, Weber studied at the University of Buenos Aires and St. John’s College at Cambridge. He worked at Cambridge and Sheffield University before joining the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois in 1962, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1986.

The J. Woodland Hastings Endowed Chair in Biochemistry honors the former University of Illinois educator who researched bioluminescence and circadian rhythms. J. Woodland “Woody” Hastings studied at Swarthmore College and Princeton. He served as director of the summer physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachussetts. His illustrious teaching career included posts at the Collège Cevenol in southern France, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Harvard.