LAUSR

I am delighted to have been invited to write the introductory article of this special issue of IUBMB Life on Protein Phosphorylation dedicated to Edmond Henri Fischer, known simply as Eddy to all his friends, who died on 27 August 2021, at the age of 101. Eddy was a great scientist with a passion for music, history and art. He had an exciting, eventful and fulfilling life, but he was also a kind and generous person. The 2 years I spent in his laboratory from 1969 to 1971 were among the most formative of my life, and my career and life would have been entirely different had I not met and worked with him. A number of obituaries about Eddy have appeared since his death, and so will only mention his early life briefly. Readers are referred to another article for a detailed account of his early life and upbringing. Briefly, Eddy was born in Shanghai, China in 1920. His family moved to Switzerland when he was seven and he was educated near Geneva, graduating from high school in 1939. He then studied chemistry and biology at the University of Geneva, from where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Organic Chemistry and then a PhD in 1947 for research on the structure of polysaccharides and alphaamylases under the supervision of Kurt Meyer. Eddy moved to the USA in 1953 to begin postdoctoral research at Caltech but on arrival was unexpectedly offered an assistant professorship in biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, which he accepted, spending the rest of his life there.