Education & Professional Experience

• B.S., California Institute of Technology (Biology)
• M.S., Ph.D., Yale University (Botany)
  NSF Predoctoral Fellow
• NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Eberhard-Karls Universitaet Tubingen
• National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA
• University of California, Santa Barbara 1961-1973:
  Assistant Professor of Botany
  Associate Professor of Biochemistry
  Professor, Biology
  Chair, Department of Biological Sciences
• Research Collaborator, Brookhaven National Lab
• University of Connecticut, 1973-1977:
  Professor, Biology
  Head, Biological Sciences Group
• NSF Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, Bedford College, University of London
• NSF Senior Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
• Harvey Mudd College, 1977-1995:
  Stuart Mudd Professor of Biology
  Initial member, Chair, Department of Biology
  Professor Emeritus, 1996-
• Visiting Fellow (Computer Science), Yale University
• Visiting Scholar (The Learning Sciences), Northwestern University

Honors

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Students made it worth it...	...but grading sucked.

Some favorites from different stages of my plant physiological avatar:

Purves, W. K., and W. S. Hillman. 1959. Experimental separation of gibberellin and auxin actions in etiolated pea epicotyl sections. Physiol. Plantarum 12: 786-798.

Galston, A. W., and W. K. Purves. 1960. The mechanism of action of auxin.Annu. Rev. Plant Physiol. 11: 239-276.

Katsumi, M., W. K. Purves, B. O. Phinney, and J. Kato. 1965. The role of the cotyledons in gibberellin- and auxin-induced elongation of the cucumber hypocotyl. Physiol. Plantarum 18: 550-556.

Purves, W. K., and C. H. Fricker. 1966. Promotion of hypocotyl growth by secondary alcohols. Zeitschr. Pflanzenphysiol. 54: 203-212.

Rayle, D. L., and W. K. Purves. 1967. Isolation and identification of indole-3-ethanol (tryptophol) from cucumber seedlings. Plant Physiol. 42: 520-524.

Percival, F. W., W. K. Purves, and L. E. Vickery. 1973. Indole-3-ethanoloxidase: kinetics, inhibition, and regulation by auxins. Plant Physiol. 51: 739-743.

Brown, H. M., and W. K. Purves. 1980. Indoleacetaldehyde reductase of Cucumis sativus L. Kinetic properties and role in auxin biosynthesis. Plant Physiol. 65: 107-113.

Sonner, J. M., and W. K. Purves. 1985. Natural occurrence of indole-3-acetylaspartate and indole-3-acetylglutamate in cucumber shoot tissue. Plant Physiol. 77: 784-785.

My Ph.D. "children"

L. Raymond Fox
David L. Rayle (deceased, 2002)
Kenneth D.Johnson
Larry E. Vickery
John E. Sherwin
Frank W. Percival
Hugh M. Brown
Dayle K. McDermitt