For some reason this news affects me deeply. I did not know Bill Lipscomb well, but I interacted closely with James when he was in the UNC Computer Science Department long ago, and members of the Colonel's scientific family have impacted me positively any number of times. So, I share the sorrow of others in this news. The apocryphal stories abound; moving a rotating anode by open-sided sling from one window to another, only to have the weight shift (tragically) in medias res, dropping the Elliot half way into the ground. At one time I equated such stories with Harvard. Today, I can acknowledge that the Colonel's flair played something of a role, too.
At the 1971 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium (the only one ever devoted to structural biology - not, as Watson pointedly noted in his opening remarks, because it was important, but because otherwise so many of his friends might die), Lipscomb's group was represented by George Reeke and Don Wiley. Wiley sported a lab T-shirt announcing that there was no law saying... and on the back side a labyrinth with no obvious path into the goal, which was clearly a structure for ATCase ... that there must be a solution. The ATCase structure was eventually solved, and by several others - among them Eric Gouaux and my colleague Hengming Ke. Don's group populated the world with many gifted crystallographers, including grandchildren Ian Wilson and Ed Collins among those I know well and many others I cannot summon. One of his early disciples, Martha Ludwig, passed away recently, leaving many progeny, including I believe, Mark Saper. The Nobel to Tom Steitz renders mention of him superfluous, except that Tom, in turn, has turned out almost countless very gifted protégées while revealing the central dogma, one step at a time. Reviewing this list, as I have been wont to do on many previous occasions, constitutes an open and shut case that the Colonel spawned, if not the first family of US crystallographers, (that might be A.L. Patterson) certainly the most prominent and prolific. As is also true of J.D. Watson, and with apologies for the numerous omissions outside my immediate sphere, at such a moment we all can celebrate what training with the Colonel brought to our community. Charlie On Apr 15, 2011, at 3:06 PM, Peter Moody wrote: > Nobel Laureate William Lipscomb Dies at 91 > By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS > Published: April 15, 2011 at 2:01 PM ET > > I have had this forwarded to me, besides getting a Nobel prize for his > discovery of the bent bonds in boron hydrides, the Colonel was a pioneer in > PX, with work on the role of Zn in carboxypeptidase and the allosteric > mechanism of ATCase perhaps being the best known. Peter > > > > BOSTON (AP) -- A Harvard University professor who won the Nobel chemistry > prize in 1976 for work on chemical bonding has died. William Nunn Lipscomb > Jr. was 91. > > His son, James Lipscomb, said Friday that Lipscomb died Thursday night at a > Cambridge, Mass., hospital of pneumonia and complications from a fall. > > Several of his students also have won Nobels. Yale University professor > Thomas Steitz, who shared the 2009 chemistry prize, says Lipscomb was an > inspiring teacher who encouraged creative thinking. > > The Ohio native grew up in Lexington, Ky., and students affectionately > referred to him as "Colonel" in reference to his upbringing. He graduated > from the University of Kentucky and got a doctorate at the California > Institute of Technology under Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. > > Lipscomb is survived by his wife and three children.
