J. Walter Woodbury

J. Walter Woodbury was born in St. George, Utah and grew up in Salt Lake City. He received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Utah in 1943, and from 1943 to 1945 was a staff member of the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Returning to the University of Utah after the end of WWII, he received a Master of Science degree in Physiology in 1947 followed by a Doctorate of Philosophy in Physiology in 1950, also from the University of Utah. In 1950 Woodbury joined the faculty of the University of Washington as an Instructor in the Department of Physiology, and was promoted to Assistant Professor and elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1952. [1][2][3]Advancing through the academic ranks he became a Full Professor in 1962, a position he held until 1973. Following a sabbatical at the University of Utah 1972-73, Woodbury accepted a position as Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Utah, and remained there until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1993, a position he held until his death. He was a son of the biologist Angus M. Woodbury.[4]

In the course of his doctoral studies Woodbury published several papers[5] and additionally spent time with Gilbert Ling at the University of Chicago learning to pull Ling-Gerard micro-electrodes and measuring the membrane potential of frog sartorius muscle.