Dear Philippe,
This is a sad news indeed. Roger was an excellent scientist and a wonderful
person. I got to know Roger upon my first visit to LURE, during my post-doc
with Max Perutz. As Max was keen on dispelling doubts raised against his
structural model of haemoglobin cooperativity, doubts that centred around the
distance of the iron from the haem plane in deoxy- and oxy-haemoglobin, he
decided to collect data to the highest possible resolution from deoxy
haemoglobin. Max arranged with Roger Fourme to collect data at LURE and we
went there several times during 1981 with crystals. As Max writes in his book
"Science is Not Quiet Life" (p. 375): ..."We were touched when Roger Fourme,
the young crystallographer in charge of the X-ray station, dropped in at 3 am
to see if the machines still worked all right for us". Those were early days of
data collection at synchrotrons when the procedures and techniques were still
at their infancy. The care shown by Roger at this time proved essential for
the success of our work and undoubtedly for that of many others who worked with
Roger at LURE in the years to come. I visited at LURE on several other
occasions and was always impressed by Roger's professional qualities and his
gentle personality.
Please pass my sincere condolences to his family.
Boaz
Boaz Shaanan, Ph.D.
Dept. of Life Sciences
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Beer-Sheva 84105
Israel
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 972-8-647-2220 Skype: boaz.shaanan
Fax: 972-8-647-2992 or 972-8-646-1710
________________________________________
From: CCP4 bulletin board [[email protected]] on behalf of DUMAS Philippe
(UDS) [[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2012 9:11 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ccp4bb] Very sad new
I learnt today that Roger Fourme passed away on December 24.
He was "Professeur Emérite" at Paris-Sud University and former "Directeur
Scientifique" of the SOLEIL synchrotron.
Along with Richard Kahn (also deceased recently), he has been deeply involved
in the development of the MAD technique.
Until his sudden death, he remained very active in the field of high-pressure
crystallography.
I think I may say he was highly appreciated in our whole community after tens
of years of commitment in macromolecular crystallography and in Science.
His funeral will take place at Palaiseau cemetery (near Paris) on January, 2nd
at 11:45.
Philippe Dumas
IBMC-CNRS, 15 rue René Descartes
F67084 Strasbourg, France
