Danenberg is “a habitational name from any of various places in Germany named Dannenberg;”* as far back as living memory stretches, however, we have been Latvians.
What started as a “simple project,” moreover, to trace the Danenberg-stem now includes many families and provenances; not just Danenbergs, but Halls, Nelsons, Fitzgibbons, et al.; not just Latvians, but Irish, Israelis, Spaniards and Poles.
Peter Danenberg has been on the Biochemistry-faculty at USC for thirty years; from his faculty-bio:
We have developed methods for quantitating gene expression by PCR and for rapid mutation detection by RNA conformational analysis. The latter technique is being used to investigate the role of mutations in acquired drug resistance. By using quantitative PCR, we have shown substantial variation among tumors in the degree of expression of genes of drug-targeted enzymes such as thymidylate synthase. Studies are under way to identify factors that alter the normal expression of these genes in cancer cells.
He also enjoys basketball, science fiction, Latvian history and the creationism-evolution pseudo-debate.
“Shostakovich! Prokofiev! Bartok! But I like Tchaikovsky and Brahms, too.” Elaine Fitz Gibbon is an accomplished cellist alongside Lucy, her cantatory sibling.
At the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop, she played in Schubert’s Forellenquintett (the “Trout”) and Prokofiev’s second quartet, along with Lucy.
“For John and Jane Fitz Gibbon, art has always been about friendship, love, humor, storytelling, and the western ethos. Their collection offers a survey of California art post 1950 and is remarkable both because of the consistently high quality of the art and because its formation represents friendships between the Fitz Gibbons and the artists who created the work,” according to Scott Shields, Curator of Art at the Crocker.
Lucy Fitz Gibbon, as of 2007 in her first year at Yale, sings there with the Glee Club; she is, along with her sister Elaine, an accomplished musician. In her words, “I got to work with Helmuth Rilling (longtime director of the Oregon Bach Festival), and Simon Carrington (a founding member of the King’s Singers). It’s really exciting to be with people who are working on ‘their thing.’”
She appeared at the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop along with Elaine in Prokofiev’s second quartet.
Malika Hale was recently featured in a Time Magazine article:
[My internship at Santa Fe Institute was] the first time I realized science is applicable to everyday life. Even if you’re not planning on becoming a biochemist, you still ought to know how science works to operate as a human being in the world.
Mariam Hale recently attended a conference at the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, where she remarked:
The convention was really cool and fun. It was really great to meet other Jewish kids. I had no idea that there was any kind of Jewish community in Albuquerque.
Kathy Danenberg has been the Chief Executive Officer for Response Genetics, Inc. since 2002 . . . . While at USC, Kathy Danenberg invented a breakthrough patented method to extract RNA from formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissue specimens which became the basis for the establishment of Response Genetics, Inc. Kathy Danenberg’s research on the kinetic mechanism of thymidylate synthase provided the rationale for use of the 5-FU-leucovorin combination in colorectal cancer.
* Patrick Hanks, Dictionary of American Family Names (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Peter Danenberg <pcd at wikitex dot org>