Bonnie Ann Wallace grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, the only child of two accountants. One year, Wallace asked for and received a chemistry set for Christmas. “After one of my early experiments involved burning sulfur in my ‘lab’ in our basement,” she explains, “the chemistry set was quickly disposed of, and that seemed to be the end of my chemistry career for a while.”

Wallace wanted to have a career as a scientist for as long as she remembers wanting to have a career at all. “This was probably first sparked in junior high school when I was part of an innovative (and small) program encouraging students to do observational biology daily on the ecology of a defined plot of land for a whole school year,” she remembers.

In her second year of high school, Wallace was top in her chemistry class, and as such was selected to take an advanced placement (AP) course. “I was in­vited by a marvelous and dedicated teacher, Mr. Gustafsson, to join a group of 20 seniors—all male—to take AP Chemistry each morning one hour before school opened,” Wallace says. On several occasions in the class, she suggested doing different experiments than those the class was scheduled to conduct to get at the same answer. “To my amazement—and joy—not only were my ideas not turned down, but Mr. Gustafsson indulged me by making arrange­ments for me to have special equipment brought in and opportunities to do the experiments my way, much to the dismay of my fellow classmates,” she recalls. “It started me realizing the joy of thinking outside the box and doing science creatively.”

Wallace chose to pursue a degree in chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). “Although it sounds very narrow of me,” she admits, “it was because I knew I could focus on science there and not have to do a great deal of the arts or humanities classes. This is quite ironic now that one of my interests is in relating science to the arts.” After earning her Bachelor of Sci­ence degree from RPI, Wallace undertook her PhD studies at Yale University, in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. She studied membrane proteins using X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy, and worked with two supervisors—a rarity at the time: Don Engelman and Fred Richards. “Having two desks and two lab benches in two different buildings and two wonderful supervisors was a real luxury,” Wallace says. “It gave me the freedom—never abused—to not be monitored in my daily work by either side.”

Following completion of her PhD studies, Wallace received a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellowship to work with Elkan Blout at Harvard Uni­versity on circular dichroism (CD) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectro­scopic studies of peptides in membranes. “My timing of going to the Blout lab was great,” she says. “His lab had done so many pioneering works on peptide structures in solution, and when I went to ask him about joining his group, my interest in extending such studies to membrane proteins just fit in perfectly with his plans.” Wallace worked for one year in Blout’s lab and then accepted an opportunity to work with Rich­ard Henderson at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where she learned the techniques of electron crystallography for membrane proteins. She stayed with Henderson’s group for the final year of her fellowship and then took an assistant professor position at Columbia University in the depart­ment of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, where she remained for a few years before moving on to RPI to head a new Center for Biophysics as Professor of Chemistry.

Wallace took a sabbatical visit to the crystallogra­phy department at Birkbeck College, University of London. “I wanted to immerse myself in crystal­lography, as I realized that looking directly at molecules was an important additional technique needed in my ‘toolkit’ for studying membrane proteins,” she explains. Just after she had returned home from her stay, Wallace was offered a perma­nent position in the department at Birkbeck, and moved her lab to London.

Though Wallace had many supportive mentors and supervisors in the early stages of her career, there were people along the way who doubted her ability because of her gender. Wallace recalls “being told by the lecturer in my first college un­dergraduate physics class—consisting of about 40 men and me—that I should go and get married, and leave the science to the men! Also, in one of my first job interviews (at an anonymous but well respected university) I was told ‘You may notice we don’t have any female professors in this depart­ment…that’s because we have never found any good enough.’ I have worked hard to prove them both wrong.”

Her students have been the beneficiaries of this attitude and effort. Sara Abdulla, Comment Edi­tor at Nature, earned her Masters of Science in crystallography at Birkbeck College with Wallace as one of her tutors. “Bonnie is a PI of worldwide repute,” Abdulla says, “because she’s fearsomely bright, she works 24/7, and she forges alliances and brings people with her. She never elbows peo­ple out of the way or pulls the ladder up behind her. [She has taught me] that a woman can get to the top in science and retain her integrity.”

Martin Ulmschneider met Wallace while asking her to be his return host for a Marie Curie Interna­tional Fellowship, and the two have collaborated ever since. “Bonnie loves research and academic pursuit, and that radiates through her interactions with those around her,” Ulmschneider says. “She has given incredible support to all her students and postdocs…One of the hallmarks of her group is that nobody wants to leave it—we all keep com­ing back whenever we can.”

“I feel that inspiring and training new generations of scientists will ultimately be an important long-term legacy,” Wallace says. “I am so very proud of the many students and postdocs who have passed through my lab, seeing what they later achieve in academia, industry, or outside of science.” Wal­lace and her husband, Robert Janes, a Biochemist at Queen Mary University of London, hold a barbeque each year for their current and former lab members, to stay in touch and encourage net­working between different scientific generations.

Wallace and Janes enjoy traveling together, and have been able to see the world as part of their work together on synchrotron radiation circular dichroism beamlines. This, and other methods development in the area of CD spectroscopy, is in addition to her primary interest in the struc­ture and function of ion channels. Wallace also enjoys working with artists to help connect science and art for students and the general public. “An interesting experience in this regard was a public dialogue I participated in with a dance company director and a sculptor, in which they—and the audience—were amazed to hear that a scientist could be passionate about what they do.” And passionate she is. Wallace says, “I think the best thing is seeing something for the first time that no one else has ever seen. It still sends tingles up my spine.”