Shyamala Gopalan

In this Indian name, the name Gopalan is a patronymic, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Shyamala.

Shyamala Gopalan (December 7, 1938 – February 11, 2009) was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene has stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology. She was the mother of Kamala Harris (former Attorney General of California and Senator, who became Vice President of the United States) and Maya Harris, a lawyer and political commentator.

Shyamala Gopalan
Born	(1938-12-07)December 7, 1938 Madras, Madras Province, British India (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India)
Died	February 11, 2009(2009-02-11) (aged 70) Oakland, California, U.S.
Other names	Gopalan Shyamala, G. Shyamala, Shyamala Gopalan Harris
Education	Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi (BSc) University of California, Berkeley (MS, PhD)
Known for	Progesterone receptor biology and applications to breast cancer, mother of U.S. vice president Kamala Harris
Spouse	Donald J. Harris ​ ​ (m. 1963; div. 1971)​
Children	Kamala Harris Maya Harris
Parent(s)	P. V. Gopalan (father) Rajam Gopalan (mother)
Scientific career
Institutions	Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, McGill University Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thesis	The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole wheat flour (1964)
Doctoral advisor	Richard L. Lyman

Early life and education

Shyamala was born on December 7, 1938, in Madras, Madras Province, British India (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) to P. V. Gopalan, a civil servant, and Rajam, her mother. Her parents were from two villages near the town of Mannargudi in Madras Province. Gopalan had begun his professional life as a stenographer, and, as he rose through the ranks of the Imperial Secretariat Service and later Central Secretariat Service, he moved the family every few years between Madras (now Chennai), New Delhi, Bombay (now Mumbai), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). He and Rajam had an arranged marriage, but according to Shyamala's brother, Balachandran, their parents were broad-minded in raising the children, all of whom led somewhat unconventional lives. A gifted singer of Carnatic music, Shyamala won a national competition in it as a teenager.

Shyamala went to the MEA school in Delhi and received her Higher Secondary Certificate in 1955. She studied for a Bachelor of Science in Home Science at Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi. Her father thought the subject—which taught skills considered helpful in homemaking—was a mismatch for her abilities; her mother expected the children to seek careers in medicine, engineering, or law. In 1958, aged 19, Shyamala unexpectedly applied to the master's program in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley, and was accepted. Her parents used some of their retirement savings to pay her tuition and board during the first year. Lacking a phone line at home, they communicated with her by aerogram after she arrived in the U.S. She earned a Ph.D. in nutrition and endocrinology at UC Berkeley in 1964. Shyamala's dissertation, which was supervised by Richard L. Lyman, was titled The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole wheat flour.

Career

Shyamala conducted research in UC Berkeley's Department of Physiology and Cancer Research Lab. She worked as a breast cancer researcher at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Wisconsin. She worked for 16 years at Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University Faculty of Medicine. She served as a peer reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and as a site visit team member for the Federal Advisory Committee. She also served on the President's Special Commission on Breast Cancer. She mentored dozens of students in her lab. For her last decade of research, Shyamala worked in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Research

Shyamala's research led to advancements in the knowledge of hormones pertaining to breast cancer. Her work in the isolation and characterization of the progesterone receptor gene in mice changed research on the hormone-responsiveness of breast tissue.

Personal life

In the fall of 1962, at a meeting of the Afro-American Association—a students' group at Berkeley whose members would go on to give structure to the discipline of Black studies, propose the holiday of Kwanzaa, and help establish the Black Panther Party—Shyamala met a graduate student in economics from Jamaica, Donald J. Harris, who was that day's speaker. According to Donald Harris, who is now an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University, "We talked then, continued to talk at a subsequent meeting, and at another, and another." In 1963, they were married without following the convention of introducing Harris to Shyamala's parents beforehand or having the ceremony in her hometown. In the later 1960s, Donald and Shyamala took their daughters, Kamala, then four or five years old, and Maya, two years younger, to newly independent Zambia, where Shyamala's father, P. V. Gopalan, was on an advisory assignment. After Shyamala and Donald divorced in the early 1970s, she took her daughters to India several times to visit her parents in Chennai, where they had retired.

The children also visited their father's family in Jamaica during their childhood.

Wanda Kagan, one of Kamala's high school friends in Montreal, described how after she told Kamala her stepfather was molesting her, Shyamala insisted she move in with them for her final year of high school. Kagan said that Shyamala helped her navigate the system to get the support she needed to live independently of her family.

Death

Shyamala died of colon cancer in Oakland on February 11, 2009, at age 70. She requested that donations be made to the organization Breast Cancer Action. Later in 2009, Kamala Harris carried her mother's ashes to Chennai on the southeastern coast of peninsular India and dispersed them in the Indian Ocean waters.

Selected publications

• Shyamala, G.; Chou, Y. C.; Louie, S. G.; Guzman, R. C.; Smith, G. H.; Nandi, S. (2002). "Cellular expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors in mammary glands: Regulation by hormones, development and aging". The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 80 (2): 137–148. doi:10.1016/s0960-0760(01)00182-0. PMID 11897499.
• Shyamala, G.; Yang, X.; Cardiff, R. D.; Dale, E. (2000). "Impact of progesterone receptor on cell-fate decisions during mammary gland development". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 97 (7): 3044–3049. Bibcode:2000PNAS...97.3044S. doi:10.1073/pnas.97.7.3044. PMC 16189. PMID 10737785.
• Shyamala, G. (1999). "Progesterone Signaling and Mammary Gland Morphogenesis". Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia. 4 (1): 89–104. doi:10.1023/A:1018760721173. PMID 10219909.
• Shyamala, G.; Louie, Sharianne G.; Camarillo, Ignacio G.; Talamantes, Frank (1999). "The Progesterone Receptor and Its Isoforms in Mammary Development". Molecular Genetics and Metabolism. 68 (2): 182–190. doi:10.1006/mgme.1999.2897. PMID 10527668.
• Shyamala, G.; Yang, X.; Silberstein, G.; Barcellos-Hoff, M. H.; Dale, E. (1998). "Transgenic mice carrying an imbalance in the native ratio of a to B forms of progesterone receptor exhibit developmental abnormalities in mammary glands". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 95 (2): 696–701. Bibcode:1998PNAS...95..696S. doi:10.1073/pnas.95.2.696. PMC 18483. PMID 9435255.
• Shyamala, G.; Schneider, W.; Schott, D. (1990). "Developmental Regulation of Murine Mammary Progesterone Receptor Gene Expression". Endocrinology. 126 (6): 2882–2889. doi:10.1210/endo-126-6-2882. PMID 2190799.
• Shyamala, G.; Gauthier, Y.; Moore, S. K.; Catelli, M. G.; Ullrich, S. J. (1989). "Estrogenic regulation of murine uterine 90-kilodalton heat shock protein gene expression". Molecular and Cellular Biology. 9 (8): 3567–3570. doi:10.1128/mcb.9.8.3567-3570.1989. PMC 362408. PMID 2796999.