News : Area native Greaser joines Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame

Marion Greaser: Vinton native selected for unique Hall of Fame in Wisconsin.

On the map: Greasers began as a railroad site.

Vinton native Marion L. Greaser was one of two individuals with outstanding lifetime contributions to the meat business who were inducted into the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame at a May 1 recognition ceremony. The other honoree was Bernard J. Peck, a Milwaukee philanthropist who headed one of the nation’s larger privately held meat processing companies.

Greaser, a UW-Madison professor who taught and did path-finding research on meat and muscle proteins, not only completed an impressive 42-year tenure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a preeminent muscle biologist and meat scientist, but he also earned both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at UW. His work resulted in 169 refereed publications, 44 symposium and invited presentations, 14 book chapters, and a textbook. His early efforts led to the characterization and naming of the subunits of the regulatory protein troponin. Later in his career he made major contributions to understanding the structure and function of the giant protein titin, including a discovery of a mutation in rats that mimics human dilated cardiomyopathy. Dr. Greaser was an outstanding instructor and also served as a dedicated Director of the Meat Science and Muscle Biology Laboratory.

Greaser was born in Vinton and raised on a farm five miles west of Vinton. He graduated from Vinton High School in 1960 and attended Iowa State University.

“The Greaser history in the Vinton area goes back to the 1800s,” said Greaser. “My father was a state legislator in the 1930s and my great-grandfather, Phillip Greaser, donated land for a railroad switch that allowed the first railroad to come to Vinton. A small village developed around that switch that became known as Greaser's Switch or Greasers. It is shown on a 1895 atlas. Note that the lines on the atlas are railroads, not regular roads.”

The Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame was created in 1993 to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to the meat industry in Wisconsin. The Hall of Fame program is coordinated by and housed in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Meat Science and Muscle Biology Laboratory. To learn more, about the Hall of Fame, click HERE.

See Greaser's faculty page HERE.