Contains materials documenting the professional career of Wolfgang K. Joklik including reprints; manuscript materials and publication correspondence; proceedings and correspondence relating to professional organizations of which Joklik was a member; programs and correspondence concerning professional talks, meetings, workshops, and symposia; employee files and recommendations; Duke University news publications; and subject files concerning the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. Major subjects include the National Academy of Science (NAS), the American Society of Virology, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Cancer Special Program Advisory Committee, the American Society for Microbiology, and both the McGinnis Memorial and Joklik Lecture Series. Materials date from 1945 to 2013.
Wolfgang Karl Joklik, Chair of the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and co-founder of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, was born in Austria in 1926. Joklik moved to Australia at age 11. He attended Sydney University (1944-1947) where he majored in Biochemisty and graduated with First Class Honors B.Sc. In 1948, Joklik received his M.Sc. in Biochemisty from Sydney University. Joklik earned his PhD (1952) from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford. Joklik carried out his postdoctoral work at Copenhagen in the Laboratory of Cytophysiology, headed by Herman Kalckar. There, with Nobel Laureate Paul Berg, Joklik helped discover the enzyme terminal transferase. Following his postdoctoral work, Joklik returned to Australia and took the position of Research Fellow, later Fellow, at the Department of Microbiology at the John Curtin School for Medical Research at the Australian National University in Canberra (1953-1962). Joklik took a sabbatical year from 1959 to 1960 in the Laboratory of Cell Biology at the NIH. In 1962, Joklik moved to the United States to begin his appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, a position he held until 1968 when he became Chair of the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (1968-1993).
As Chair of Duke's Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Joklik oversaw the growth of the department from six to thirty-three faculty members, and under Joklik's leadership it became ranked as one of the top three programs in the nation. During this time, Joklik also co-founded the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center (1972), which later became known as the Duke Cancer Institute (DCI). Following his retirement as department chair, Joklik continued to research and teach at Duke, beginning appointments in 2002 as James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Medicine, and Professor Emeritus of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology.
Joklik devoted his career to the development and application of molecular virology. His research focused primarily on reovirus, vaccinia, and poxvirus. Within this field, Joklik has received much professional commendation. Joklik served as editor-in-chief of Virology for 24 years, associate editor of the Journal of Biological Chemisty (1974-1985), and editor of Zinsser's Microbiology, a textbook used by many microbiology and immunology students. Joklik founded the American Society for Virology and served as the society's first president (1982). He was elected as a member of both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1981) and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (1982). Other honors include the ICN International Prize in Virology (1991), a Distinguished Faculty Award bestowed upon Joklik by the Duke Alumni Association (2005), and the Anlyan Lifetime Achievement Award (2013). Duke University created a named professorship in Joklik's honor, the Wolfgang Joklik Professorship in Medicine, and also established the annual Joklik Distinguished Lectureship hosted by the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology to commemorate Joklik's contributions to the department and field of Microbiology and Immunology.
