June Rothman Scott, a native of Forest Hills, Queens, N.Y., earned her B.A. at Swarthmore College, and her Ph.D. in Biology at M.I.T., working with Dr. Salvador Luria, a member of the National Academy of Science. She received a National Cancer Institute Fellowship for postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University, where she met and married John Scott. They both joined the faculty of Emory University School of Medicine in 1969, where June rose through the ranks in the Microbiology Department. In 1988-89 she received a Fogarty Fellowship to work at the Institute Pasteur in Paris.  She was named a Charles Howard Candler Professor of Microbiology at Emory in 1993.

With her large research lab, June published over 100 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals and she has been invited to speak at many international meetings.  She served on the Editorial Boards of international Microbiology journals and on the review boards of granting agencies, including those reviewing bacteriology, virology, and microbial genetics grants for the U.S. National Institutes of Health and for Canada, Israel, and Germany.  She has also consulted for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and holds three patents resulting from her work at Emory. She was elected representative of the Molecular Biology Division of the American Society for Microbiology (which had over 35,000 members) for 1984-86. In 1994, she was elected a Fellow of this Society. 

Since retiring in 2012, June has pursued her interest in music and art by auditing undergraduate Emory courses and renewing her study of flute. Currently, June serves on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College, edits the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s newsletter for mid and upper level donors, and serves on the Leadership Committee for this level of ASO donors. Recently, she also joined the Board of Emory’s Friends of Music.