In Chemistry Department, Schreiber is an Anomaly

You can't miss the Porsche.

Parked outside of the chemistry labs in Conant Hall, Professor of Chemistry Stuart L. Schreiber's car stands out among the other faculty vehicles.

"That very expensive car causes much jealousy among the other professor," says Associate Professor of Chemistry Andrew R. Barron.

Schreiber himself tends to stand out a bit in his Harvard department. What with the car, the tan, the stubble, the J. Crew style clothes and a house which has been featured on the cover of Boston Magazine, Schreiber may well be the Don Johnson of the chemistry scene.

But colleagues say his research merits the clothes, the house and just about anything else Schreiber may want.

The Harvard professor was the fourth "hottest" scientist in the world last year, according to Science Watch magazine. The ranking is based on how many times a scientist's work is cited by other researchers.

And thanks to groundbreaking work in chemical biology Schreiber is "one of the leaders in modern organic chemistry in the U.S., if not the world,:" Barron says.

Even Schreibers' office is undoubtedly trendy, with abstract paintings a black leather couch and his own purple leather chair.

The fashion here, as well as the house, may have more to do with Schreiber's wife Mimi packman, than himself.

Schreiber and packman met in 1978 when he walked into the punk clothing store she then owned.

Amidst the store's usual Gene Simmons-lookalike clientele, the then Harvard doctoral student stood out, she says. Not too much, however, since the chemistry professor has a taste for heavy metal music--Metallica and motorhead--and horror movies.

"I remember he was seemed very quiet and restrained quite different from the people I was used to seeing come to my store," Packman says. "Even though I had a boyfriend who I was living with at the time, Stuart still caught my eye."

It was the Newbury Street clothing store that packman now owns that put the Schreibers' Back Bay brownstone on the cover of Boston Magazine.

A customer in the store complimented Packman on its decor, and another customer in the shop said, "if you like her shop you should see her home," Schreiber says.

The first customer was a journalist, and the Schreiber home was soon on the newsstands.

It was not the first time Schreiber had been featured in the mainstream media, however.

In 1984, the well-respected chemistry professor had the privilege of sharing Esquire Magazine's Most Dubious Achievement award with John DeLorean.

His "achievement" was summarized by radio talk show host Don Imus on the air as a "crackpot professor from Yale creating a cockroach dating agency," Schreiber says.

The professor even got a call from the president of Yale about his new found notoriety.

His experiment was in fact a good deal more complex than creating a "cockroach dating agency," of course.

Schreiber was synthesizing--or essentially making from scratch-a complex molecule known as Periplanone-B. This molecule, which was a cockroach pheromone represented a certain structural class of molecules in chemistry known a terpenes.

One reason for creating the molecule artificially was for possible commercial use in roach exterminators, but for the researcher this was the experiment's least important purpose.

"To my dismay it was the....reason that got the most coverage by the media," Schreiber says "Most of the newspaper articles and wire services focused on using this molecule as a cockroach sex attractant."

In fact, Schreiber was seeking to understand the reason for the physical response the molecule caused in the insect, and also use it to showcase the abilities of his field of study at the time, synthetic organic chemistry.

Schreiber did not start out interested in organic chemistry, or any chemistry at all.

A native of Fairfax, Va., he attended the University of Virginia, where he originally intended to major in biology.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I started college," Schreiber says.

But when he took organic chemistry as a requirement for the biology concentration he found it appealed to him for its looks.

"It seemed like an aesthetically attractive field to me," he says. "Many of those structures have these amazing shapes which caught my attention."

It was also the concreteness of the field that drew him in, Schreiber says.

"I like to understand the things around us at the molecular level," he says. "I liked physics but it is hard to relate it to the world around you."

Schreiber did his graduate work and obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard in 1981. The same year, he went directly to a Yale assistant professorship, bypassing the usual postdoctoral fellowships or waffling.

And the wooing of the already hot young professor began almost immediately.

"I began to receive job offers after a few years and I almost moved," he says.

But in 1988 he finally took a professorship at Harvard, where he is now familiar to undergrads as the teacher of introductory orgo classes Chemistry 17 and Chemistry 27.

Schreiber's research today focuses on cell biology, which he calls "one of the most explosive areas in research."

His work has developed new links between chemistry and biology. He is a pioneer in the burgeoning field of chemical biology.

"Stuart's greatest contribution to Harvard thus far is the same as his greatest contribution to science," says Cabot Associate Professor of Chemistry Gregory L. Verdine. "By essentially creating a new field of research, chemical cell biology, he has brought a great deal of attention to Harvard as a place where extremely innovative science is done at the interface of chemistry and biology."

Schreiber's research into signal transduction, whose malfunction is the first step in cancer has practical applications as well.

"We studied signal transduction," Schreiber says,. "This involved looking at natural products that had effects on cells that caused them to no longer proliferate."

One of those products, cyclosporin, had potential as a lifesaving drug, he says.

His work led to the creation of a new pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Ariad Pharmaceuticals, which has continued work on the possible applications of cyclosporin.

Schreiber says his own research is not focusing on the substance or its applications, however.

His work on cell biology consumes all his time, he says leaving few hours for anything but commuting in the Porsche and a rare hobby or two.

Occasionally, he says, he jogs, walks with his wife or watches movies.

But as befits the hottest young chemist around, most hours are spent in the lab.

"I'm here seven days a week, 365 days a year," he says.