Inclusive Community: Lawrence Cory
This story was originally published in the Summer 2007 issue of Saint Mary's magazine.
As an evolutionary biologist, Lawrence Cory takes a long-term view — not only in his study of amphibian genetics, but also in his relationship with Saint Mary’s. Cory is among the few who have watched the Moraga campus grow from an uninhabited marshland to the College of today.
As a student in the 1930s, a Brother in the ’50s and ’60s and a member of the science faculty since the early ’50s, Cory has seen Saint Mary’s from every perspective. He has spent most of his 90 years teaching in the College’s classrooms, tinkering in its laboratories and searching for salamanders in its marshes.
It is no exaggeration to say that he was present at the creation — the campus’ 1927 groundbreaking. That spring, a 10-year-old Cory and his father took the train from Oakland out to the ceremony. The Corys were big Saint Mary’s football fans, as were many Bay Area Irish Catholics who were proud when the “Galloping Gaels” beat Cal for the first time in 1926.
“When my father heard they were opening the new campus, he wanted to be there for it,” Cory recalls. “But when we got there, there wasn’t a house in sight. There was a lot of dry grass on the hills and cattle grazing all around.”
The campus has grown substantially in the 80 years since cows outnumbered students, and Cory witnessed much of the change firsthand. An admirer of the Brothers’ work, he entered the novitiate when he was 13. He started attending Saint Mary’s in 1935, but before he graduated he was sent to teach high school in San Francisco.
In a decade at Sacred Heart High, he taught physics and algebra, was athletic director and drove the school bus. He also took classes at UC Berkeley, receiving his bachelor’s in biology in 1942. After earning a doctorate from Notre Dame in 1952, he returned to Saint Mary’s to teach biology, and he’s been here ever since.
“For a long time, Larry was the Biology Department at Saint Mary’s,” colleague Allan Hansell says. “He taught every course, and even after the department hired new people, many of the courses were still his in the sense that he designed them. He’s done an amazing amount of work building up the curriculum.”
Cory was a Brother until 1972. Today, he and his wife, Suzanne, live in Walnut Creek and have a grown son and daughter. During his 55 years on the faculty, Cory has played a role in important scientific research that capitalized on technological advances. During the 1960s, he noticed that fruit flies’ genetic mutations in the Sierras correlated with concentrations of a new pesticide, DDT. As evidence about DDT’s harmful effects mounted, Congress asked scientists for advice, and in 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency summoned Cory to Washington to testify.
“Scientists’ work on DDT, including my work on DDT distribution in the Sierras and its relationship to chromosomal changes among fruit flies, led to Congress’ decision to ban DDT,” Cory says. “That’s something I’m particularly proud of today. The ban has been so successful that birds such as the bald eagle and peregrine falcon no longer need special protection.”
The DDT work led Cory to different pesticides’ effects on amphibians such as the California newt, which drew him back to his first scientific discoveries.
“I remember when I was 7 or 8 splashing around in the creek that ran through our property in Oakland. I found a jelly-like mass that was full of salamander eggs,” Cory says. “When I moved it in my hand, the eggs within the gel would all rotate at the same time, and that fascinated me. Today, I’m still doing research on that same type of salamander.”
After eight decades, Cory knows the California newt better than anyone. He is the first person to suspect it might be two distinct species and is conducting DNA examinations to find out.
Cory’s ability to keep up with genetics and other scientific revolutions dazzles colleagues.
“He truly believes a scholar is more than a teacher, and that’s enriched the department,” Professor Carla Bossard says. “He keeps himself up to date by reading all the journal articles — not just about his own research, but on all the hot topics in science.”
In March, Cory was honored as Professor of the Year, and his keynote speech reflected his interest in observing change over time — the dramatic shift in women’s status at Saint Mary’s. When he was a student, there were not only no women students, there were no women on the faculty or in administration. He recalled that when the Brothers’ Superior General visited in 1948, the few women who worked on campus were asked to stay home.
“There wasn’t just a neglect of women, but an active rejection,” says Cory, who in 1970 was on the College’s Board of Trustees that voted to admit women. “Now, two-thirds of the students and half the faculty are women.”
Mary Englert ’75, one of Cory’s first female students, remembers conducting experiments with Cory on the heredity of fruit flies’ eye color. When she came up with unusual results, she worried that Cory might blame her for not doing the experiment correctly. Instead, he re-examined the data and eventually reformulated his hypothesis.
Englert recently accompanied him on a salamander expedition and notes that he still dons hip waders and dives right in.
“It is inspiring to witness that his level of enthusiasm and curiosity about his subject matter has not waned,” she says.