LAUSR

Two weeks before he died, I talkedto Brianon the phone. Wewere discussing how to raise funds for the “Spetses Academy”, intended to bring together eminent scientists and bright students at Brian’s beloved Greek island. Brian’s voice was tired, with a touch of despondency. I rarely heard Brian tired (even during his last difficult months) – and never despondent. A few days later he died. I met Brian for the first time almost 40 years ago when he, as one of the few EMBO Fellows from Denmark, interviewed me for an EMBO Long Term Fellowship. It was quite a cultural shock to experience a professor at Aarhus University, who was distinctly different from all other professors I had met in my young life: an apparently ferocious character, smartly dressed and owner of a powerful sports car. But while Brian could be abrupt, bluff and unceremonious in speech and manners, he also had a golden lionheart. For the last 30 years of his life, Brian was my loyal and caring friend. Brian was not liked by everyone – as is often the case for great personalities. But he had an amazing international network of friends and admirers, including an impressive number of Nobel Laureates, who in various ways became evident when Brian and I, with other good friends, started two initiatives under the auspices of the European Federation of Biotechnology, one aiming at further collaboration between China and Europe within biotechnology (EFBIC), the other intending to offer European scientific and technological support to help developing countries to use biotechnology to cope with the great challenges of disease, hunger and poverty (EAGLES). Among the many towering figures that joined one or both of these programmes were Huanming Yang (China), Ismail Serageldin (Egypt), Marc van Montagu (Belgium) and David McConnell (Ireland). Professionally, Brian could serve as a role model for future generations of scientists. If Brian could be cloned (his genome has been sequenced by Huanming Yang and his friends in China for a start), the next generation of Brians would invigorate academic institutions all over the world with some of the classical virtues of “the world of yesterday”. Brian first obtained his degree and postdoc experiences in some of the most eminent universities and research institutions in the UK, most notably Cambridge, and the US, including MIT and NIH. Then he became an internationally acclaimed scientist, because of his groundbreaking results within structural biology, particularly related to the complex structures composed of tRNA, EF-TU and GTP/GDP. In 1974, he moved from his beloved Cambridge to Aarhus