Shyamala Gopalan

In this Indian name, the name Gopalan is a patronymic, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Shyamala.

Shyamala Gopalan
Born	(1938-12-07)7 December 1938 Madras, Madras Presidency, British India (present day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India)
Died	11 February 2009(2009-02-11) (aged 70) Oakland, California, U.S.
Other names	Gopalan Shyamala, G. Shyamala, Shyamala Gopalan Harris
Citizenship	Indian
Education	Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi (BSc) University of California, Berkeley (MS, PhD)
Known for	Progesterone receptor biology and applications to breast cancer, Mother of vice president of the United States Kamala Harris
Spouse	Donald J. Harris ​ ​ (m. 1963; div. 1971)​
Children	Kamala Harris Maya Harris
Parent(s)	P. V. Gopalan (father) Rajam Gopalan (mother)
Scientific career
Institutions	Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, McGill University Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thesis	The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole wheat flour (1964)
Doctoral advisor	Richard L. Lyman

Shyamala Gopalan (December 7, 1938 – February 11, 2009) was a biomedical scientist born in British India, whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology. She birthed Kamala Harris (who became Vice President of the United States in 2021) and Maya Harris (a lawyer and political commentator) in 1964 and 1967.

During her marriage to Kamala and Maya's father Donald J. Harris in 1968 she became a permanent resident of the United States. She then divorced Donald in the early 1970s. Donald later became a US citizen.

Early life and education

Shyamala was born on December 7, 1938, in Madras, Madras Province, British India (present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) to Rajam Gopalan and P. V. Gopalan, a civil servant. Her parents were from two villages near the town of Mannargudi in Madras. According to The Los Angeles Times, "Gopalan was a Tamil Brahmin, part of a privileged elite in Hinduism’s ancient caste hierarchy". According to Shyamala's brother, Balachandran, their parents were broad-minded in raising the children, all of whom led somewhat unconventional lives. Gopalan began his professional life as a stenographer, rising through the ranks in the civil service, moving the family every few years between Madras, New Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta.

A gifted singer of Carnatic music, Shyamala won a national competition in it as a teenager. She studied for a BSc in Home Science at Lady Irwin College in Delhi. Her father thought the subject—which taught skills considered helpful in homemaking—was a mismatch for her abilities; her mother expected the children to seek careers in medicine, engineering, or the law. In 1958, aged 19, Shyamala unexpectedly applied to a master's program in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley, and was accepted. Her parents used some of their retirement savings to pay her tuition and board during the first year. Not having a phone line at home, they communicated with her after her arrival in the US by aerogram. She earned a PhD in nutrition and endocrinology at UC Berkeley in 1964. Shyamala's dissertation, which was supervised by Richard L. Lyman, was titled The isolation and purification of a trypsin inhibitor from whole wheat flour.

Career

Shyamala conducted research in UC Berkeley's Department of Zoology and Cancer Research Lab. She worked as a breast cancer researcher at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Wisconsin. She worked for 16 years at Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University Faculty of Medicine. She served as a peer reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and as a site visit team member for the Federal Advisory Committee. She also served on the President's Special Commission on Breast Cancer. She mentored dozens of students in her lab. For her last decade of research, Shyamala worked in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Research

Shyamala's research led to advancements in the knowledge of hormones pertaining to breast cancer. Her work in the isolation and characterization of the progesterone receptor gene in mice changed research on the hormone-responsiveness of breast tissue.

Personal life

In the fall of 1962, at a meeting of the Afro American Association—a students' group at Berkeley whose members would go on to give structure to the discipline of Black studies, propose the holiday of Kwanzaa, and help establish the Black Panther Party—Shyamala met a graduate student in economics from Jamaica, Donald J. Harris, who was that day's speaker. According to Donald Harris, who is now an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University, “We talked then, continued to talk at a subsequent meeting, and at another, and another." In 1963 they were married without following the convention of introducing Harris to Shyamala's parents beforehand or having the ceremony in her hometown.

In the later 1960s, Donald and Shyamala took their daughters, Kamala, then four or five years old, and Maya, two years younger, to newly independent Zambia, where Shyamala's father, Gopalan, was on an advisory assignment.

Shyamala Gopalan Harris became a lawful permanent resident in April 1968 after applying in January 1968.

After Shyamala divorced Donald in 1970, she took her daughters to India several times to visit her parents in Chennai, where they had retired.

The children also visited their father's family in Jamaica as they grew up.

Wanda Kagan, one of Kamala's high school friends in Montreal, described how after she told Kamala her stepfather was molesting her, Shyamala insisted she move in with them for her final year of high school. Kagan said that Shyamala helped her navigate the system to get the support she needed to live independently of her family.

Death

Shyamala died of colon cancer in Oakland on February 11, 2009. In lieu of flowers, she requested that donations be made to the organization Breast Cancer Action. Later in 2009, Kamala Harris carried her ashes to Chennai on the southeastern coast of peninsular India and scattered them in the Indian Ocean waters.

Selected publications

• Shyamala, G., Y.-C. Chou, S. G. Louie, R. C. Guzman, G. H. Smith, and S. Nandi. 2002. "Cellular expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors in mammary glands: Regulation by hormones, development and aging", Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 80:137–48.
• Shyamala, G.; Yang, X.; Cardiff, R. D.; Dale, E. (2000). "Impact of progesterone receptor on cell-fate decisions during mammary gland development". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 97 (7): 3044–49
• Shyamala, G. 1999. "Progesterone signaling and mammary gland morphogenesis". Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia, 4:89–104.
• Shyamala, G., S. G. Louie, I. G. Camarillo, and F. Talamantes. 1999. The progesterone receptor and its isoforms in mammary development. Mol. Genet. Metab. 68:182–90.
• Shyamala, G.; Yang, X.; Silberstein, G.; Barcellos-Hoff, M. H.; Dale, E. (1998). "Transgenic mice carrying an imbalance in the native ratio of A to B forms of progesterone receptor exhibit developmental abnormalities in mammary glands". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 95 (2): 696–701.
• Shyamala, G., W. Schneider, and D. Schott. 1990. Developmental regulation of murine mammary progesterone receptor gene expression. Endocrinology 126:2882–89.
• Shyamala, G; Gauthier, Y; Moore, S K; Catelli, M G; Ullrich, S J (August 1989). "Estrogenic regulation of murine uterine 90-kilodalton heat shock protein gene expression". Molecular and Cellular Biology. 9 (8): pp. 3567–70. ISSN 0270-7306.