Beatrice M. Sweeney

Eleanor Beatrice Marcy "Beazy" Sweeney ((1914-08-11)August 11, 1914–(1989-07-17)July 17, 1989) was an American plant physiologist and a pioneering investigator into circadian rhythms.

[4][5] She attended graduate school at Radcliffe College, where she investigated how auxin affected cytoplasmic streaming in Avena seedlings under the supervision of Kenneth V. Thimann.

[2][6][5] While in Santa Barbara, Sweeney gave a tour of the campus to the daughter of a family friend, future Nobel laureate Carol W. Greider, who was a high school student at the time.

By bringing dinoflagellates into culture and by defining their multiple photoperiodic responses, especially the physiological and ultrastructural aspects of the circadian rhythms of their bioluminescence, she has influenced the research direction of many laboratories.

[6] She suffered a stroke on 30 June 1989 while traveling to the Gordon Conference on Chronobiology, while visiting the Marine Biological Laboratory at the invitation of her long time collaborator John Woodland Hastings, and fell into a coma.

[2] Upon arrival at the Scripps Institution, Sweeney wanted to study photosynthesis of red and brown algae in different colors of light.

[16] In 1969 and 1975, she went to sea aboard the NSF's RV Alpha Helix, and studied bioluminescence on voyages to New Guinea and South East Asia.

[5][17][18] She studied the red tides that killed fish, caused by dinoflagellate algae, and consulted with groups trying to combat these disasters.

[19] She continued her research into circadian rhythms for the rest of her career, publishing her monograph Rhythmic Phenomena in Plants in 1969, and a second edition in 1987.