Growing up on a dairy farm in Illinois sparked my interest in biology which led to two exciting summers of research in the high school summer program at the Roscoe B. Jackson Laboratory at Bar Harbor, Maine. At Radcliffe College I majored in Biochemical Sciences, and my senior research thesis in the laboratory of Professor Carroll Williams involved the search for the insect juvenile hormone in various vertebrate tissues.  For my Ph. D. at Cornell University, I studied the role of epidermal dedifferentiation in newt limb regeneration with Professor Marcus Singer in Zoology and the physical chemical properties of the clam muscle protein paramyosin with Professor Harold Scheraga in Chemistry (my dissertation).  My first postdoctoral research explored the physical chemical properties of human carbonic anhydrase with Professor John Edsall at Harvard University and was followed by two years of teaching biology and animal physiology at Wellesley College and doing further research on the structural properties of paramyosin. After two years I decided to forsake protein chemistry and to return to insect endocrinology, spending a year as a Research Fellow back at Harvard University in Professor Carroll Williams’s laboratory learning more about juvenile hormone.   In 1966 I became the first woman Assistant Professor (followed by Associate Professor in 1971) in the Department of Biology at Harvard University, where I, my students and postdocs began exploring many aspects of the endocrine control of insect development and reproductive behavior.  I moved with my husband James Truman to the Department of Zoology, University of Washington in 1973 as a tenured Associate Professor and became Professor of Zoology in 1975 and the first Virginia and Prentice Bloedel University Professor from 2000-2005.  I became Professor of Biology in 2003 when the Departments of Zoology and Botany merged and retired as Professor of Biology Emeritus in September, 2007.  Since October, 2007 I have been a Senior Resident Fellow at Janelia Farm.

    My research over the years on molting and metamorphosis in the tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta, has been instrumental in the establishment of this organism as a model for the endocrine regulation of post-embryonic development of insects.  One major theme has been to understand how juvenile hormone prevents the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a moth and also how it regulates embryogenesis.  Most of our effort has been on the basic side delving down from the organism to the molecular level.  We also have contributed to the application of juvenile hormone as an Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) which is in current use in mosquito and flea control and some integrated pest management schemes for agricultural lepidopteran pests.  Hormones and behavior in Lepidoptera as well as sex pheromone reception were other early themes in my research.  Now I am studying hormonal regulation of neurodevelopment and behavior in Drosophila.