My Life Story

Schwartz, Neena B.

(born 1926 in Baltimore/Maryland)

was the first child of Paul Schwartz and Pauline Shulman Schwartz. Both my parents were immigrants from Russia, my father having come to the United States with his parents and two brothers in 1912. My mother came in 1921, also with her parents and two sisters and one brother. My father and mother had a "ma-and-pa" grocery in central Baltimore until the late 1930s when my father went into the wholesale food business, in which he remained almost without interruption until he retired. I have a younger brother, Leon, and a sister, Pearl Schwartz Imber. I feel fortunate that the three of us are close and good friends. An important addition to our nuclear family occurred when my maternal grandfather came to live with us after the death of his wife. Tsodik Shulman was a scholar and a humanist and reinforced the atmosphere in the house of learning and curiosity.

During both junior and senior high school I worked on the school newspaper, anticipating a career in journalism. I wrote news and feature stories, as well as the occasional poem usually of a satirical nature. I entered Goucher College in Baltimore expecting to major in English; naturally I joined the newspaper staff. In the course of my English courses I was told by one of the professors that I did not have a "creative talent," a devastating comment. But secretly I agreed, and I knew I did not want a career as a professor of English, or as a critic.

To satisfy a liberal arts requirement I took a course in Physiology which used the provocative, thoughtful A.J. Carlson textbook. Simultaneously I was taking a course in philosophy, reading William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience. In a "religious" experience of my own I suddenly recognized that one could be creative as a scientist, not just as a writer, and I decided to become a physiologist! I scrambled to make up the necessary mathematics, physics and chemistry (possible in those days but probably not now) and graduated with credits in English and in Physiology and as Editor-in-Chief of the Goucher newspaper.

After switching to science I worked at Johns Hopkins University between my sophomore and junior years in the laboratory of Curt Richter. The following summer I entered the college program at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, where I worked with Meredith Runner, the developmental biologist, with whom I conducted an experiment looking at uterine function in mice of several strains. The following summer I returned as a research assistant and was part of a project on the timing of the pituitary contribution to the circadian rhythm in postpartum ovulation. We concluded erroneously that the pentobarbital which we used as an anesthetic for hypophysectomy was "stressing" the mice and thus blocking ovulation, and we dropped the project. Shortly thereafter Everett and Sawyer showed that pentobarbital blocks ovulation - and so I missed fame and fortune early in my career!

I attended graduate school at Northwestern University where I worked with Allen Lein, first on the chemical measurement of iodine in the blood and then on the role of the thyroid with respect to skeletal muscle function. Working with Lein was a lucky break for me, as had been my experience with Meredith Runner; both are men of high integrity, dedicated teachers and genuine human beings.

I continued my work on the actions of thyroid hormone on neuromuscular function for some years after leaving for my first position as instructor at the University of Illinois Medical School. In fact, my first NIH grant was on this subject. However, I became bored with the thyroid and with the issues of mechanisms of hormone action. I remembered the pituitary-reproduction work that I was carried out at Bar Harbor - by this time Everett and Sawyer had shown the daily LH surge in the rat, and I was hooked. I spent about a year reading the literature on pituitary-ovarian neuroendocrinology and have been in this field since.

Thus my career was shaped by two major intellectual switches. The first was in my major at college, the second occurred after graduate school. I believe the nonmonolithic nature of my background has made me a better rounded person and scientist. I have never lost my love of literature nor have I been afraid of new methodology in my work.

Our initial work in pituitary-ovarian interactions utilized a "stop entry" approach (before radioimmunoassay made multiple measurements in the blood possible), in which I blocked the action of a hormone or its entry into the blood and then examined the acute effects on uterine weight, vaginal cytology or pituitary bioactive LH and FSH content. Using ovariectomy, hypophysectomy, pentobarbital, antiserum to LH or estrogen antagonist, we mapped out the sequential steps in the regulation of the estrous cycle (1,2,4). These results culminated in a theoretical model of the cycle, which I was privileged to present at the Laurentian Hormone Conference as the first Gregory Pincus Memorial Lecturer in 1968 (3). Modeling in endocrinology has had its ups and downs in general acceptance; I remain convinced of its heuristic value.

Our work on the cycle led to a question which has dominated my research ever since. When we first started studying the cycle, the issue of how many pituitary gonadotropins there are was unsettled, because of cross-reactions in the bioassays (5). It became increasingly clear that there are two, but that both are made in the same pituitary cell in spite of their separate secretion under some circumstances. This led us to search for ovarian inhibin with Cornelia Channing (6), a search that I have described in a "Remembrance" in Endocrinology (10). After providing physiological evidence for its existence in follicular fluid, it was gratifying to collaborate on a study demonstrating the changes in mRNA for inhibin subunits in the ovary during the estrous cycle (8).

The recognition of two gonadotropins under partially separate control has guided my laboratory in another line of research. Sonia Ringstrom and I showed that glucocorticoids have a deleterious effect on LH secretion, but sparing FSH (7). This has been an interesting model, and by now the laboratory has also demonstrated this in vitro (7) and shown in vivo that cortisol upregulated mRNA for FSH-ß subunit specifically (11).

In addition to the work in the laboratory I have participated in the struggle to obtain equal treatment for women in science. I strongly believe that the particular skills and approach that women bring to their work is sorely needed in science itself and in political uses of science. I was involved with the formation of the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) and Women in Endocrinology (WE), a group within the Endocrine Society. Women have been central to research in many areas of endocrinology, and it is appropriate that we influence the directions of research and application to human welfare. By means of these two organizations I have also hoped to enhance the availability to young women scientists of senior female mentors to help them work their way through the system. I did not have female mentors past college, but was particularly fortunate in my male mentors. Not all women are this lucky, and AWIS and WE have served as surrogate mentors to many young women.

1. Schwartz NB (1964) Acute effect of ovariectomy on pituitary LH, uterine weight and vaginal cornification. Am J Physiol 207:1251-1259

2. Shirley E, Wolinsky J, Schwartz NB (1968) Effects of a single injection of an estrogen antagonist on the estrous cycle of the rat. Endocrinology 82:959-968

3. Schwartz NB (1968) A model for the regulation of ovulation in the rat. Recent Prog Horm Res 25:1-55 (Gregory Pincus Memorial Lecture, Laurentian Hormone Conference)

4. Schwartz NB, Ely CA (1970) Comparison of effects of hypophysectomy, anti-serum to ovine LH, and ovariectomy on estrogen secretion during the rat estrous cycle. Endocrinology 86:1420-1435

5. Schwartz NB (1974) The role of FSH and LH and of their antibodies on follicle growth and on ovulation. Biol Reprod (symposium) 10:236-272

6. Schwartz NB, Channing CP (1977) Evidence for ovarian "inhibin" suppression of the secondary rise in serum follicle stimulating hormone levels in proestrus rats by injection of porcine follicular fluid. Proc Natl Acad Sci 74:5721-5724

7. Ringstrom S, Schwartz NB (1985) Cortisol suppresses the LH, but not the FSH, response to gonadotropin-releasing hormone after orchidectomy. Endocrinology 116:472-474

8. Woodruff TK, D'Agostino JB, Schwartz NB, Mayo KE (1988) Dynamic changes in inhibin mRNAs in rat ovarian follicles during the reproductive cycle. Science 239:1296-1299

9. D'Agostino JB, Valadka R, Schwartz NB (1990) Differential effects of in vitro glucocorticoids on LH and FSH secretion: dependence on sex of pituitary donor. Endocrinology 127:891-899

10. Schwartz NB (1991) Remembrance: Why I was told not to study inhibin and what I did about it. Endocrinology 129:1690-1691

11. Ringstrom SJ, McAndrews JM, Rahal JO, Schwartz NB (1991) Cortisol in vivo increases FSHB mRNA selectively in pituitaries of male rats. Endocrinology 129:2793-2795.

(Reproduced from Zur Geschichte der Endokrinologie und Reproduktions-medizin (Gerhard Bettendorf, ed.), pp.502-504, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1995)