David A. Brenner grew up in Queens, New York, the oldest of three children.  His father worked in the family business, a ladies’ clothing store; his mother was a housewife until her children were grown, at which time she went into real estate.  Brenner was bar mitzvah, but he had no attraction to religion.  He was always interested in the sciences. 

For Brenner the sciences meant medicine, and he chose Yale University as a good school for biology.  He found chemistry static and dull, but biology was burgeoning.  After his junior year, Brenner spent a year on a research ship, working for Edward Thorndike of the Lamont Geological Observatory, and becoming interested in marine biology.  Back at Yale he reverted to biology, working in Joseph Bloomer’s lab and winning an award for his outstanding thesis.

Only two medical schools required a thesis of students, and wanting to continue to do research, Brenner chose Yale.  He continued working in Bloomer’s lab, studying protoporphyria in the Liver Study Unit.  He took his two years of classes and then went back to the lab.  He worked on variegate porphyria, writing a thesis that was published in New England Journal of Medicine.  Brenner and his wife, who had also been a medical student at Yale, then went to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for three years.  He wanted to learn molecular biology, so he spent three years in Daniel Camerini-Otero’s lab, while his wife did rheumatology.

Brenner next took a job at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).  He worked for a year in clinical gastroenterology on liver diseases.  He set up his lab and began his study of ferrochelatase.  Mario Chojkier persuaded Brenner to join his molecular biology knowledge with Chojkier’s biochemical knowledge in a study of collagen.  Brenner also joined the staff of the Veterans Administration Medical Center. 

At the end of the 1990 interview, Brenner explains his title and its connection to tenure; his lab management style; competition and collaboration; and his winning of the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences award.

He starts the 2009 interview by reviewing his early years in college and affirming his career decisions.  He expresses joy in the richness of biology; he appreciates the insights his clinical experience gives him in his research.  He also reminisces about his long lab hours and his residency.  He remembers life in the NIH labs and discusses moonlighting to keep up his clinical skills while he did his postdoc.  And he talks about the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences award and the Pew annual meetings. 

After several years Brenner moved to the University of North Carolina (UNC), becoming a full professor and continuing his work on ferrochelatase and fibrosis in cirrhosis.  He was named director of the university’s Center for Digestive Diseases and Nutrition and became Editor-in-Chief of Gastroenterology.  He commanded more lab space and more equipment.  He found UNC’s intellectual approach similar to those of UCSD and Yale.  North Carolina, furthermore, had a welcoming lab community and was a good place to establish his family life (and, as Brenner notes, there was also Atlantic Coast Conference basketball, and the sky was always Carolina blue).  His children had time to grow up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, before Brenner moved to Columbia University, where he became Samuel Bard Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine.  After his five years as Editor of Gastroenterology Brenner was lured back to San Diego; there he became Vice Chairman for Health Services and Dean. 

At the end of the interview he talks about various universities; his administrative duties; and his lack of time for the lab.  He explains his hope to affiliate the children’s hospital to the UCSD system, tells some visa stories about his foreign postdocs, and talks more about grant writing and his grants.  He laughs when asked how he has balanced his home life and work life, saying he never did balance them and mentions that his children are now grown, his daughter in medical school at Columbia, and his son, a graduate of University of Georgia, in business.  They all get together, however, at the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball championships, of course rooting for the Tar Heels.