Biophysical Society Bulletin | October 2020

InMemoriam

Harold Scheraga Passing of A Titan

I am very sad to report the death of our colleague Harold Scheraga on August 2, 2020. Harold was 98, the same age as his wife of 76 years, Miriam, who pre-deceased him in January of this year. Harold was an Emeritus member of the Biophysical Society. Harold was a towering figure in biophysics, who began his career at Cornell University in 1947 and continued to work almost to the day of his death. He published more than 1,400 research papers. His research grant from NIGMS was continu- ously funded for 64 years; I very much doubt that we will see this record broken in our lifetimes. Harold’s research interests were wide, but his focus was on the biophysics of proteins and their interactions. He per- formed both experimental and theoretical research, aimed at understanding the forces that contribute to the folding and stability of proteins. In later years he was quite occupied with the CASP protein fold prediction competition. The list of Harold’s graduate students, postdoctoral associ- ates, and collaborators is very long, and he is fondly remem- bered as a tough but caring mentor. I first met Harold after my husband, Peter Wright , and I moved to California in the 1980s. Harold always attended conferences, even when he was not invited to speak, and we encountered each other at several of these meetings. I was somewhat in awe of meeting one of the people whose work had been discussed in my undergraduate biochemis- try lectures! After he and Miriam started to spend several (winter) months in California (Harold as an adjunct member of our department at Scripps Research), we got to know them

Jane Dyson and Harold Scheraga

very well. Harold would attend our group meetings, and we frequently had spirited discussions of the group’s results, with Harold to the fore. To our regret, these extended visits stopped after 2012, when Miriam became too frail to travel. We were particularly happy to welcome Harold and Miri- am and a number of other friends to our house for several consecutive New Year’s Eves — the first of these events was held on the cusp of the millennium, and we held the party every year from 2000 to 2014. After 2012, it just wasn’t the same without the Scheragas! In September 2011, we attended a special symposium at Cornell University in honor of Harold’s 90th birthday. I was asked to speak, and I prefaced my talk with some pictures of my undergraduate notebook, showing the notes I had made in 1972 from lectures in far-off Sydney, Australia, on Harold’s protein folding work. Harold was very amused and asked me to send him the slides. Like many of Harold’s associates, we felt a special bond with him and with Miriam. We felt like they were family, and we miss them. — H. Jane Dyson

Call for Papers

With the rapid rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths, treatments and cures are urgently needed beyond handwashing, social dis- tancing, masks, isolation, and quarantines. The treatments and vaccines rely on fundamental understanding of the complex viral ap- paratus, from the protein exterior to the RNA viral genome. Better mathematical analysis to understand the spread of infections and howmany factors influence such disease spread are also needed. Biophysicists have been at the forefront of these multidisciplinary efforts, with research on the basic biophysical elements of the viral machinery, drug and vaccine design, infection analysis, and more. Submit papers by December 15, 2020 To submit, visit biophysj.msubmit.net Special Issue: Biophysicists Address COVID-19 Challenges

October 2020

18

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y