Biophysical Society Bulletin | September 2021

InMemoriam

George H. Patterson

breaking the diffraction limit of light. George’s discovery and opti- mization of photoactivatable fluorescent proteins directly enabled the development of the super-resolution technique known as photoactivated localizationmicroscopy (PALM), for which Betzig received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014. In 2009, George accepted an investigator appointment at NIBIB, where he continued to develop fluorescent proteins and su- per-resolution imaging techniques for use in cell biology. At NIBIB, George made major contributions to create novel genetically encoded fluorescent proteins, utilizing structure-basedmuta- genesis, spectroscopy, and imaging characterization. He became a tenured Senior Investigator in the NIBIB Intramural Section on Biophotonics in 2021. George was a global leader in the field of photoactivatable microscopy, and he was honored as this year’s first recipient of the Royal Microscopical Scientific Achievement Awardmarking outstanding scientific achievements in all areas of microscopy for established, mid-career researchers. George was smart, focused, thoughtful, and had a legendary pas- sion for research. During his collaboration with Betzig and Hess, the three worked 15-hour days for months—George was really in his element with that! Throughout his career, he always loved discovering and creating at the lab bench, a love that he shared at his children’s elementary school, where he hoped to open the students’ eyes to science. At home, George translated this love to the kitchen, where, as “master of the grill,” he routinely surprised family and friends with new recipes and creations. It is not an exaggeration to say that George was liked by everyone who knew him. His journey from rural Tennessee to lab chief at the NIHwas inspiring and showed that great talent can come from anywhere. He also was deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and built his lab based on those guiding principles. We will remember George as a brilliant scientist and outstanding mentor, as well as a wonderful husband, father, and friend. We will also remember his humbleness, his genuine com- passion, his sense of humor, and his immense love of music. We convey our deep condolences to George’s wife Susanne, his children, Isabella andMax, and their entire family. The family requests that donations can be made to the Lustgarten Founda- tion for Pancreatic Cancer Research (https:/ lustgarten.org). For additional information about George, see https:/www.nibib.nih. gov/about-nibib/staff/in-memoriam-george-patterson. —Richard Leapman —Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz

“Life and love go on, let the music play.” – Johnny Cash George H. Patterson (1970–2021), a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section on Biophotonics in the National

Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), died of compli- cations frompancreatic cancer on June 20, 2021. He was only 50 years old, re- cently tenured, with a wife, two young children, and a promising career before him. We are all extremely sad about the loss of this warm friend and brilliant and creative scientist taken away far too soon. George was born inWayne County, Tennessee, and graduated fromCollinwood (TN) High School in 1988. Of all his illustrious in- vited talks, the one that George was most proud of was giving the Collinwood High commencement address in 2018. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Alabama in 1992, where his research career started with a project on the reproduc- tive cycle of a freshwater mussel, Cyclonai tuberculata . In 1993, George was accepted into the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program at Vanderbilt University, where he joined the lab of David Piston in the Department of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics. During this time he joined the Biophysical Society (BPS) and attended his first of many BPS Annual Meetings in 1996. As became a pattern in George’s career, his impact in the Piston lab was outstanding. He published 10 papers, 7 as first author, and some of those now have ~1,000 citations. George was awarded a PhD in 1999 for his biophysical studies of glucose metabolism in pancreatic islets of Langerhans, which incorporated quantitative fluorescence imaging using fluorescent proteins. George then accepted a postdoctoral position in Jennifer Lippin- cott-Schwartz ’s lab in the Cell Biology andMetabolismBranch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He developed the first photoactivable green fluorescent protein (PA-GFP), a revolutionary tool because of its ability to be switched on from a dark state by a pulse of UV light, enabling the high- lighting and tracing of specific subpopulations of proteins and organelles within cells, as well as selected cell populations over time. Four years later, he became a staff scientist in the Lippin- cott-Schwartz lab, where he continued work with PA-GFP and its uses in protein trafficking. During this exciting time, George collaborated with Eric Betzig and Harald Hess , then visiting scien- tists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a bold idea for George H. Patterson

—David W. Piston —Bruce Tromberg

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