In Memoriam William Martin Gelbart (1945-2015).

WILLIAMMartin Gelbart died Tuesday morning, August 11, 2015, after a valiantfightwith cancer. Bill was born September 11, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Brooklyn College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin in 1971, working in the laboratory of Alan Fox. He did postdoctoral workwith Ed Lewis at California Institute of Technology andwith Art Chovnick at the University of Connecticut before joining the Harvard University faculty in 1976, a position he helduntil his passing.Hewas promoted toAssociate Professor in 1980 and to Full Professor in 1983. His research focused on the genetics and genomics of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In the Chovnick laboratory he participated in fine structure recombinational analyses of the rosy (ry) locus and succeeded in identifying structural and regulatory regions of the gene by purely genetic means. He became interested in the process of transvection (pairingdependent control of gene expression), due to the influence of Ed Lewis, and he published several articles on the topic. His Harvard laboratory focused on understanding the molecular basis of pattern formation, concentrating on cell–cell signaling related to the decapentaplegic (dpp) pathway, on which he did the seminal and definitive work. Beyond his many research contributions, Bill was well respected for his leadership in the Drosophila community. He served as Principal Investigator for FlyBase since the project was initiated in 1991. This publicly available data source has become an invaluable resource to the international research community; its utility is due in no small part to Bill’s dedication and leadership of the project. Bill was committed to community service. A small list includes organizing the Drosophila meeting, serving on the Drosophila board, and serving as its president. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of WormBase, the Zebrafish Information Network, the Arabidopsis Information Resource, and The Germplasm Resources Information Network. He was a member of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) Large-Scale Genome Sequencing Network Advisory Committee, the National Advisory Council to the NHGRI, Chair of the NHGRI Coordinating Committee for Selection of Large-Scale Sequencing Projects, and a Board Member of Genome Canada. He was an advisor to the original Human Genome Sequencing project. Hewas amember of theGenetics Society of America (GSA) Board of Directors, an Associate Editor of GENETICS, and the 2010 recipient of GSA’s George W. Beadle Award for contributions to the community of genetics researchers. An abiding devotion of Bill’s was the meetings on the molecular biology of Drosophila held at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, Greece. Bill was a mainstay at these meetings from their inception in 1980, and he attended every session. He acted as Chair of the meeting for the last 4 years. Bill and his wife Susan gained an appreciation and love of Greek culture and made innumerable friends in the local scientific community and beyond. Indeed Bill and Susan became well known in small villages on the island where they were treated as respected friends and family. Bill was a dedicated teacher who provided a clear introduction to genetics to scores of Harvard undergraduates. He mentored many graduate and postgraduate students in his laboratory who have gone on to successful careers in research and teaching in academia and industry. He was a Harvard College Freshman Advisor for many years and the Faculty Advisory Committee Chair of The Harvard Foundation, promoting intercultural and race relations. For many years, he served as theHeadTutor for theundergraduate concentration in biology and as program director for an interdepartmental predoctoral training program in genetics and genomics. Bill was a coauthor of a genetics textbook that gained wide adoption due to the high quality and currency of its contents. Beyond the Harvard campus, Bill developed a course, “Frontiers in Genetics” in collaboration with colleagues at the Copyright © 2015 by the Genetics Society of America doi: 10.1534/genetics.115.182238 ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1406-7671 (T.K.) Address for correspondence: Department of Biology, Indiana University, 1001 E. Third St., Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: [email protected] William Martin Gelbart