I met Jim DeKloe 20 years ago, when he was a professor of biology at Solano Community College.
In elementary school, Jim loved going on nature field trips with the Boy Scouts. By the time he was 14, he was focused on biochemistry as a career.
Jim was fortunate in choosing the University of California, Los Angeles, where he completed his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, because of the professors he was able to study with: Winston Salzer would eventually be one of the founders of Amgen. Paul Boyer was founding director of the Molecular Biology Institute and would be awarded a Nobel Prize in 1997 for research on the “enzymatic mechanism underlying the biosynthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP),” work that he was doing when Jim was his student. Allan J. Tobin is known for his pioneering research of hereditary diseases, including Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and epilepsy, and spinal cord injury.