John Woodland "Woody" Hastings, (March 24, 1927 – August 6, 2014) was a leader in the field of photobiology, especially bioluminescence, and was one of the founders of the field of circadian biology (the study of circadian rhythms, or the sleep-wake cycle). He was the Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural Sciences and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. He published over 400 papers and co-edited three books.
Hastings research on bioluminescence principally focused on bacterial luminescence (over 150 papers) and dinoflagellates (over 80 papers). In addition to bacteria and dinoflagellates, he, with his students and colleagues, also published papers on the biochemical and molecular mechanisms of light production in fungi, cnidarians, ctenophores, polychaetes, insects (fireflies and dipterans), ostracod crustaceans, millipedes, tunicates, and fishes with bacterial light organs. His laboratory produced the first evidence for quorum sensing in bacteria, early evidence of the molecular mechanisms of circadian clock regulation in organisms (first using dinoflagellate luminescence and then expanded to other cellular proteins), and some of the initial studies of energy transfer in green fluorescent proteins (GFP) in cnidarian luminescence.
Hastings lived in Seaford, Delaware, during his early childhood; in 1937, he joined the choir at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and attended the choir's in-house boarding school, visiting his family during vacations. Hastings moved to Lenox School in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1941 to complete his secondary education and was interested in literature, physics, mathematics, ice hockey and basketball.
Throughout his career Hastings received numerous awards and honors:
Elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, 1969;
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1972;
NATO Senior Fellow in Science, Foundation Curie, Orsay, France, 1977;
Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Bonn, Germany 1979-80 and 1993;
Yamada Foundation Fellow, Osaka, Japan, 1986;
NIMH Merit Award, 1990 and 1994;
Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, 2003;
American Society for Photobiology Lifetime Achievement Award, 2003;
Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 2003;
Recipient of the Farrell Prize in Sleep Medicine for his contributions to and for founding the field of circadian rhythms, 2006.
Hastings began his graduate studies at Princeton University in 1948 in the laboratory of E. Newton Harvey, the world leader of luminescence studies at the time, and focused on the role of oxygen in the luminescence of bacteria, fireflies, ostracod crustaceans and fungi. He received his PhD in 1951. He then joined the lab of William D. McElroy, another student of Harvey’s, at Johns Hopkins University where he discovered both the stimulatory effects of coenzyme A and gating control by oxygen of firefly luminescence, and that flavin is a substrate in bacterial luminescence.
In 1953 he joined the faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northwestern University. In 1954 he began a long collaboration with Beatrice M. Sweeney, who was then at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in elucidating the cellular and biochemical mechanisms of luminescence in the unicellular dinoflagellate Lingulodinium polyedrum (formerly known as Gonyaulax polyedra). A byproduct of this initial research was their discovery of circadian control of the luminescence.
In 1957, Hastings next took a faculty position in the Biochemistry Division of the Chemistry Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he continued his focus on dinoflagellate and bacterial luminescence and dinoflagellate circadian rhythms. Hastings joined the faculty of Harvard University as Professor of Biology in 1966. During this period he continued and expanded his studies of circadian rhythms in dinoflagellates and luminescence in bacteria, dinoflagellates and other organisms. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 and received the Farrell Prize in Sleep Medicine for his work on circadian rhythms in 2006.
For over 50 years he also had an affiliation with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He was the director of the Physiology Course there from 1962 to 1966, and served as a trustee from 1966 to 1970.