Patricia DeCoursey

Patricia (Jackson) DeCoursey is a leading researcher in the field of chronobiology. Her research focuses on behavioral, physiological, and ecological aspects of mammalian circadian rhythms. She is credited with creating the first Phase Response Curve (PRC). PRC’s are used throughout the field today to help illustrate the change of a biological oscillation in response to an external stimulus. She currently works as a biology professor at the University of South Carolina (USC).

At an early age, DeCoursey expressed much interest in nature. She became fascinated with the outdoors though traveling with her father, a physician, and the rest of her family to remote wilderness areas While attending Hunter College High School in New York City she began collecting data on the songbirds of a hardwood forest in Long Island. She mapped the number and location of the birds as well as their distinctive calls. She entered this project in the 1950 Westinghouse Science Talent Search and was named a finalist along with her twin sister Cynthia (Jackson) Fisher.

DeCoursey's interest in ornithology led her to Cornell University, where she received a degree in zoology in 1954. She met George DeCoursey, at Cornell University, where he was a student at the time. She married George DeCoursey in 1954. DeCoursey furthered her education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she earned a Ph.D. in zoology and biochemistry. She did postdoctoral research with Jürgen Aschoff at the Max-Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Erling-Andech, Germany for two years. She then continued her research at Washington State University,

She is currently a distinguished professor of biology at University of South Carolina where she has continued to further her research on mammalian circadian rhythms since she moved there with her husband in 1966.

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