U.C. picked Bisson to chair V&E at Davis

Wines & Vines, June, 1991

The University of California has selected scientist Dr. Linda F. Bisson, 39, as the new Chairman of the Department of Viticulture and Enology at Davis. She is the 8th chairman of the prestigious department since it was moved from Berkeley to Davis in 1935 and is the first woman.

Dr. Bisson succeeds English-born Dr. Michael Mullins, whose untimely death at 53 was due to cancer last November, after coming to Davis from the University of Sydney in Australia in 1987. The first chairman at Davis in the Thirties was the late Dr. Albert Winkler.

A San Francisco native, Dr. Bisson assumed her new office April 15, the anniversary of the date the department was established at Berkeley in 1880. Professor of enology and geneticist in the Agricultural Experiment Station, she has been on the Davis staff since 1985. A graduate in biology at San Francisco State University, she earned an M.A. there and received her doctorate in microbiology in 1980 at U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Bisson was at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology and molecular genetics for five years before accepting the Davis position. In 1989 she was awarded the best paper in enology by the American Society for Enology and Viticulture. Dr. Bisson's papers include works on fermentation rate and sugar transport, alternatives to Bentonite, and amino acid utilization, nitrogen metabolism and urea formation.

Her appointment comes as the University deals with one of the late Dr. Mullins' goals: a new multi-million dollar Viticulture and Enology building and pilot winery to replace out-moded facilities built at Davis in 1939. A feasibility study is under way.

The department also is faced with the retirement of three longtime scholars: Dr. Vernon L. Singleton June 30, and Dr. Ralph E. Kunkee and George M. Cooke Sept. 30. Dr. Cornelius Ough, although eligible to retire, is staying on as an enology professor.

Dr. Singleton is internationally known for his work on aging wines and Dr. Kunkee is an authority on yeast and enzymes. Cooke has been extension enologist for over 30 years. Dr. Ough, a former chairman of the department, served as acting chairman after Dr. Mullins' death.

An addition is Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, due July 1 from an assistant professorship at Tulane University. Waterhouse is a natural products chemist.

When the state legislature, in 1880, charged the university to do research and provide instruction in viticulture and enology, the man in charge was Prof. Eugene W. Hilgard, whose name lives on in Hilgardia, a journal of agricultural research. Following Hilgard about 1900 was another winegrowing scholar, Frederic T. Bioletti. In later years, emeritus professor Dr. Maynard M. Amerine, as chairman, did much to establish Davis as one of the foremost viticultural and enological centers in the world. Named after him is a professorial chair funded by Ernest Gallo.