Dr. Pearlman is a native of Calgary, Alberta (born 1941), where he received his schooling until the end of high school. He then moved east and received a B.Sc. in Honors Chemistry from McGill University in 1961 and an AM and Ph.D. from Harvard University from the Committee on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1966, working with Nobel Prize winner Konrad Bloch. Following two years of postdoctoral training at the Biological Institute, Carlsberg Foundation in Copenhagen Denmark supported by an NRC/NATO fellowship, he returned to Canada in 1968 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology, York University, Toronto. He has been at York since then rising through the ranks to Full Professor and in 2004, the honor University Professor was conferred upon him. During his career, he has spent time visiting in various capacities the Department of Biochemistry B, University of Copenhagen; the Department of Biology, Yale University; the Mitsubishi Kasei Institute of Life Sciences, Tokyo, Japan; the Department of Molecular Biology, the Danish Pharmaceutical University; the Centre Genetique Moleculaire, CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; and other venues. As a postdoctoral fellow in Copenhagen, he began working with the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila as an exceptionally attractive animal model system for various studies in cell and molecular biology. He has continued to contribute to and lead research with this organism, a system where many fundamental studies such as identification of catalytic RNA (ribozymes-Cech)), telomeres and telomerase (Greider and Blackburn), identification of histone acetyltransferase as a transcription factor opening the field of the histone code and epigenetics (Allis), the role of small RNA in developmentally programmed genome rearrangement and epigenetic gene silencing (Gorovsky), have been made. He has published over 100 papers in peer reviewed journals during his career and presented his work in many venues including national and international conferences. Most of his work has been using Tetrahymena as a biological system although he has contributed to research in other areas as well. Recently, he has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board and Steering Committee for the Tetrahymena Genome Project that has led to the determination of the complete sequence of the Tetrahymena genome, a large and complex genome only 30 times smaller than the human genome. He has exploited the genome sequence to pioneer functional genomic analysis, particularly through global studies of the Tetrahymena proteome.

As well as scientific contributions, Dr. Pearlman has been active in teaching both undergraduate and graduate students. He has served the peer review process with terms on peer review committees with both the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and with peer review for many journals. He has been an associate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Evolutionary Biology Program, has served on the Gairdner Foundation Medical Review Panel, and presently serves on the Gairdner Foundation Medical Advisory Board and on the Council of the Royal Canadian Institute. He recently served as Associate Dean (1999-2004) and Dean (2005-2007) of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University.