On the 18th of August 2012, Ajit Singh Dhaunchak passed away at the age of 33 in Quebec, Canada. His tragic and premature death was a terrible loss to his family, friends and colleagues, all of whom miss his dynamic personality and ever-smiling presence. At his funereal, Phil Barker, interim director of the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) at the time, emphasized how Ajit embodied that rar...

Professor Roger Nordmann, founder of the pioneering European Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism (ESBRA), passed away on Friday, 24 January 2014. His tireless dedication to the organization calls for a testimony to a remarkable profile of achievement, devotion and action. Born on 24 May 1926 and raised in the city of Strasbourg, he attended high school at the Lycée Fustel de Coulanges...

Peter Laurberg, Denmark, member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, deceased unexpectedly on 20 June 2016. When walking by foot in Tiflis, Georgia together with his wife shortly after his 71st birthday, he was involved into a car accident. Whereas his wife survived, Peter Laurberg died. Peter Laurberg was worldwide one of the leading thyroidologi...

Prof. Frederick Jelinek, dr.h.c., Julian Sinclair Smith Professor at theWhiting School of Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University and the director of JHU’s Center for Language Speech and Processing, died unexpectedly at his workplace on Sept. 14, 2010. Prof. Jelinek is survived by his wife Milena Jelinek, professor at Columbia University, son and daughter William and Hannah, three grandchil...

Professor Grant Jordan died on Friday 23 June at his home in Hatton, UK, aged 68. Most people know him as an esteemed international scholar in the field of public administration, the policymaking process and interest group politics. We remember him as a valued colleague, mentor and friend. After graduating from Aberdeen University (the class of 1971), Grant worked in market research for 18 mont...

The recent passing of Louis Chauvois in Paris, will fill many an English heart with sorrow. For he was the cultured French gentleman at his best, and his courteous manner and his beautiful powers of speech were something never to be forgotten. When he and his charming granddaughter attended the tercentenary commemoration in London of the death of William Harvey in 1957, they truly dominated tha...

Victor Yngve (5 July 1920 to 15 January 2012) was a major contributor in a number of fields within computational linguistics: as the leading researcher in machine translation (MT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as editor of its first journal, as designer and developer of the first non-numerical programming language (COMIT), and as an influential contributor to linguistic th...

Dimitri managed SAHARA-J: Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS exceptionally well and ensured its swift transition to Scholar One. He did so with great enthusiasm and passion right up to him being diagnosed with a debilitating illness that led to his untimely passing. Dimitri diligently set up and refined the internal systems, structures, processes and marketing tools for the journal’s effecti...

th Marc Leng who died on the 7 of May 2000 at the age of 64 from pleural cancer has made an important contribution in the field of Biophysics. Through years of successful studies on deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) and on the mechanism of action ofthe well-known anticancer drug cisplatin, he gained high international standing and generated more than 200 publications and 3 patents. His death is a gr...

189 Neurology illustrated reviewed by James T Hughes 200 Fast facts: obstructive sleep apnea reviewed by Peter Solin OBITUARY 214 Bevan Harvey Coombes by Andrew H Coombes and Howard J Coombes