13 Feb Meet Monell: Gary Beauchamp on the Power of Collaboration in Smell and Taste Science

When Gary Beauchamp came to Monell, he never thought it would be for a lifetime.

When he arrived more than 50 years ago, the Center was a small, experimental institute at the University of Pennsylvania. He had just finished his PhD at the University of Chicago and was looking for a postdoctoral position, something temporary, a place to spend a year or two, publish a few papers, and then move on to a “real job.”

“I never got a real job,” he says with a smile. “I was just stuck here—and I loved it.”

Today, Gary is Director and President Emeritus and Distinguished Member at Monell Chemical Senses Center. But titles matter less to him than the work itself. He still comes in nearly every day. He still writes papers. And he’s still fascinated by the same fundamental question that first brought him here.

From Guinea Pigs to People

Gary trained as a biologist studying imprinting: how early-life experiences shape lifelong preferences. As a graduate student, he worked with guinea pigs, exploring how young mammals form attachments through smell, much like newly hatched chicks rely on vision.

When he came to Monell, he brought both his guinea pigs and his curiosity with him.

He began asking what animals can learn about each other through scent. Do they signal disease? Identity? Compatibility? Attraction?

One of his earliest findings was deceptively simple: male guinea pigs are highly attracted to the smell of females. But that observation opened the door to decades of research into chemical communication. Working with chemists, Gary spent 25 years trying to identify the molecules responsible for that attraction.

He never fully solved that particular puzzle. “But we did a lot of interesting things along the way,” he says.

That willingness to follow questions wherever they lead, even without tidy endings, has defined both his career and Monell’s scientific culture.

The Scent of Identity

In collaboration with physician and writer Lewis Thomas, Gary helped investigate a once-radical idea: that a subset of genes responsible for our immune systems, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, may also help determine our unique body odors.

Every person (except for identical twins) has a distinct MHC profile. What if that genetic individuality is reflected in scent, with each individual having a unique smell tied to their specific MHC profile?

Years of work with mice demonstrated that these genes influence odor in ways that other animals can detect and use for mate selection. The implications extend to humans, helping explain how smell may subtly shape attraction and even discourage close relatives from pairing.

The research also helped lay groundwork for modern efforts to identify disease through smell, an expanding area of inquiry with real clinical promise.

How Flavor Begins Before Birth

One of Gary’s most influential research partnerships began with a postdoctoral fellow, Julie Mennella, who arrived at Monell eager to expand from animal research into human development.

Gary had already begun shifting some of his work toward infants, exploring how babies detect and respond to the smells and flavors around them. Julie brought deep knowledge of human biology and infancy. Together, they asked a deceptively simple question:

When do flavor preferences actually begin?

In a landmark 1991 study, they showed that when pregnant or breastfeeding mothers consumed specific flavors (garlic was one of the most memorable examples) those flavors appeared in amniotic fluid and later in breast milk. Infants exposed to those flavors before birth and during nursing responded more positively to them later.

In other words, flavor learning starts in the womb.

The study earned Gary and Julie an Ig Nobel Prize, an award given for research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. But behind the playful framing was a finding that reshaped how scientists understand early development and taste.

Why Cats Don’t Care About Sugar

In the 1970s, Gary and colleagues set out to study sweetness in cats. At the time, it was widely believed that all animals preferred sweet taste. So they tested domestic cats—and then lions, tigers, and other big cats at the nearby Philadelphia Zoo.

The result? Cats seemed completely indifferent to sugar.

Decades later, after scientists (including Gary’s group) identified the molecular receptor responsible for detecting sweet taste in humans and mice, he revisited the feline mystery. The answer was clear: cats lack a functional sweet receptor gene; they lost the ability to taste sugar.

As obligate carnivores, they don’t need it. “They literally do not live in the sweet world,” he says.

That finding has since been extended across species, reshaping how scientists understand taste evolution.

Olive Oil, Ibuprofen, and the Mediterranean Diet

After tasting a particularly pungent extra virgin olive oil in Sicily, he noticed something familiar about the burn in his throat. It felt strikingly similar to the sensation caused by ibuprofen.

Back at Monell, working with colleagues including Paul Breslin and Amos Smith, he helped identify the compound responsible: oleocanthal, a natural anti-inflammatory agent more potent than ibuprofen on a per-molecule basis.

That discovery has been cited more than a thousand times and continues to inform research into heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other inflammatory conditions. It also helped provide a biochemical explanation for the health benefits associated with the traditional Mediterranean diet.

“It’s one of the most exciting things we’ve ever done,” he says.

Changing How We Taste Salt

Another line of research tackled a public health challenge: why we love salt, and whether that preference can change.

Gary and colleagues demonstrated that after two to three months on a low-sodium diet, people’s taste preferences shift. Foods that once seemed “just right” become too salty. Lower levels become satisfying.

The finding supported major public health efforts encouraging gradual salt reduction in processed foods; strategies that, in some countries, have significantly reduced rates of hypertension.

It also confirmed something Jonathan Swift had described centuries earlier in Gulliver’s Travels: taste adapts.

Yes, science sometimes catches up to literature.

Building a Scientific Family

Ask Gary what he’s most proud of, and he won’t start with olive oil or cats or salt.

He’ll talk about people.

Over the decades, more than 300 trainees have passed through Monell. Many now lead laboratories, shape public policy, work in industry, or direct major medical programs. One former postdoc now heads an organization diagnosing rare pediatric diseases.

“We created this person, in a sense,” he says. “And we’ve done that in so many places.”

He describes his trainees as “psychological children.” Their successes, he insists, are the true measure of his career.

Monell’s collaborative structure, where scientists routinely work across labs and disciplines, helped foster that environment. In fact, at one point, NIH reviewers struggled to identify a single “principal investigator” on certain projects because so many researchers were working together.

“That wasn’t the model NIH worked with,” he recalls. “But that was our model.”

It still is.

A Small Institute with a Big Impact

From its earliest days, Monell was international. Young scientists from England, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, China, and beyond came to Philadelphia to study smell and taste, fields once considered niche, even trivial.

But as Gary points out, sensory science “entails all of biology,” from molecular receptors to behavior, nutrition, immunity, and public health.

Monell remains small, nonprofit, and highly focused. That focus, he argues, is its strength. Supporting sensory science may seem modest compared to funding a major medical school, but the ripple effects—in health, policy, and training the next generation of scientists—are enormous.

“It’s a very effective way to support the health and welfare of humanity,” he says.

After more than five decades, he still believes there is no place he’d rather be.