Clara Franzini-Armstrong (born October 3, 1938 in Florence) is an electron microscopist,[1] and Professor Emeritus of Cell and Developmental Biology at University of Pennsylvania.
As a child, during World War II, she spent time in a hillside village where she lived with her mother, father, and three brothers: Paolo, Carlo, and Marco.
The part of her childhood that occurred after the war consisted of; competing with her brothers on exhausting mountain hikes, roller skating in Piazzale Michelangelo, observing the entire beautiful city, and long relaxing times in scenic settings like the Dolomites.
Her brother Paolo became a particle physicist; Carlo a medical physician who constructed the first interference microscope in Pisa; and Marco, an accomplished mineralogist.
[4] By chance, the Ministry of Education gave the first electron microscope to the University of Pisa, which allowed Franzini-Armstrong access to it and sparked her passion for microscopy.
[4] Numerous additional scientists greatly helped and influenced Franzini-Armstrong's work, including Richard Podolsky, Sir Andrew Huxley, and Paul Horowitz.
[4] From 1963–1964, Franzini-Armstrong worked as Richard Podolsky's research assistant at the National Institutes of Health, and he improved her foundation on the physiology of muscle activation.
[6] Franzini-Armstrong's primary interest in science has been the disposition of membranes and macromolecular complexes that are responsible for excitation-contraction (e-c) coupling in cardiac and skeletal muscles.
[5] Furthermore, the third phase of Franzini-Armstrong's structural work recognized the relationship between the L type calcium channels of the plasmalemma and T tubules in cardiac and skeletal muscles.
[5] Her fourth phase, which continues to be her current interest, is the supramolecular complex that enables several molecules located in the sarcoplasmic reticulum that regulate calcium release to interact with one another.
[6] Simona Boncompagni, a researcher at the D'Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara in Italy describes Franzini-Armstrong as, “a scientist with strong determination and humanity at the same time.
"[4] Paul Allen agrees as he explains, “on a bench at a Biophysical Society meeting 13 years ago, she single-handedly saved my career as a scientist and helped create one of the most successful multi-center group collaborations that ever existed.
From 2007 to the present day, Franzini-Armstrong, Ph.D., has been working as an Emeritus Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
[8] Her husband, Clay Armstrong, MD, has been working as an Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
[9] Additionally, the five decades of research that Clara Franzini-Armstrong and Clay Armstrong have done has recently been recognized by the Society of General Physiologists—with a named lecture series.
[9] Furthermore, in 2014, two additional Nobel laureates, Linda Buck and Martin Chalfie, delivered the now-annual Society's Friends of Physiology Lecture Series honoring Clara Franzini-Armstrong and Clay Armstrong.