Remembering Henry Bourne (1940-2023) | UC San Francisco

Henry Bourne, MD, a longtime researcher at UC San Francisco who chronicled her rise to prominence in the 1970s, has died at the age of 83.
As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Bourne made significant contributions to understanding how cells send signals to one another. But he is also remembered for the curiosity and passion he brought to the lab and campus research community.
Bourne not only recruited promising students, postdocs, and faculty to UCSF, particularly when he was a department head, but also provided his colleagues with the encouragement they needed to persevere, and even grow, through the difficulties they would inevitably face.
“It was impossible not to get carried away by his contagious enthusiasm,” said Orion Weiner, PhD, a UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute professor who served as Bourne’s mentor from 1995-2001. “He helped us believe that even the most ambitious projects were possible, and with his creativity and insight, they usually were.”
Bourne came to UCSF in 1969 with a medical degree, research experience at the National Institutes of Health, and several years of experience as a journalist. With a knack for both exploring molecular communication between cells and sharing his findings with colleagues at UCSF and beyond, he quickly earned the admiration of his peers and students. In 1971 he was admitted to the faculty of the School of Medicine.
“He was fascinated by the way the cells in our tissues talk to each other and control their behavior in response to various changes in their environment,” said colleague David Morgan, PhD, vice dean for research at UCSF’s School of Medicine. “But he was bigger than his science and brought an unforgettable spirit to our campus. Whatever the subject, he expressed his opinions, often in colorful language, on the subjects he was passionate about, without a filter.”
Bourne’s research interests began with influential studies of G protein-coupled signaling and later in his career he turned to studies of cellular pathfinding in the body or chemotaxis.
In nearly 40 years as a researcher, Bourne has authored more than 150 primary journal articles and 95 book chapters, and received 17 awards from professional organizations, including induction into the National Academy of Sciences in 1994 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996 from 1983 until 1994 he was chairman of the UCSF department of pharmacology.
“Took his role as Elder Statesman seriously”
Bourne also enjoyed sharing his non-scientific interests with his colleagues. After reflecting on scientists and their relationship to literature, he put up signs around several research buildings inviting people to join him in a book club.
“Over 30 people came to read Ulysses together,” recalled Dyche Mullins, PhD, a professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, who met Bourne while he was considering going to the university as a postdoc. “PhD students, postdocs and professors came and participated for weeks, all people who felt they needed something outside of academia to strengthen themselves.”
After closing his lab in 2005 and becoming faculty emeritus in 2008, Bourne returned to his first love — writing — and has published several books, including a 2009 memoir of his life in science, Ambition and Delight, and a 2017 institutional history of UCSF , Paths to Innovation, which chronicled UCSF’s rise from a regional medical institution to an internationally recognized leader in biomedical research.
“It’s a book that describes how very important discoveries were made over a period of eight years in the 1970s within a 150 meter diameter by four different people, three of whom received Nobel Prizes,” Bourne said of the book’s publication in 2011 .
These scientific luminaries—Michael Bishop, PhD, Harold Varmus, MD, Hebert Boyer, PhD, and Stanley Prusiner, MD—inspired a young Bourne to pursue a lifetime of innovation in science. And Bourne, in turn, spent his later years campaigning for changes in the education of young scientists.
He has authored articles, narrated a video, and dedicated his latest book, Follow the Money, to these ideas, which centered on equipping young graduate students for success in academia—primarily by refocusing graduate programs on undergraduate preparation scientific careers.
“He took his role as an elder statesman seriously,” Mullins said. “He had seen how the university worked over the past 30 years and had strong opinions about what worked and what didn’t work, always in the spirit of UCSF to remain an innovative, dynamic, and world-class institution.”
Bourne, who died April 15, is survived by two sons, Michael and Randy, and a daughter, Margaret, and five grandchildren.