It is with much sadness and great respect for Prof. Rossmann and the phenomenal accomplishments of his life’s work that we inform you of his passing on May 14, 2019. Prof. Rossmann was a member of the managing committee member of the World Society for Virology since 17/09/2017. He was a Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University, where he has worked for the last 54 years. He was graduated from the University of London (B.Sc. (General), 1950; B.Sc. (Special), 1951; M.Sc., 1953) and the University of Glasgow (Ph.D., 1956), after which he was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. William Lipscomb at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis (1956-1958) and a Research Associate with Prof. Max Perutz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England (1958-1964). He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the British Royal Society, and a 2000-2006 member of the National Science Board, the oversight body for the National Science Foundation. He has received numerous international honors and has honorary degrees from universities in Canada, France, Sweden, England, and Belgium. His laboratory utilizes X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to study the biological structure of various animal and bacterial viruses at atomic resolution to determine how these molecular assemblages recognize specific hosts, tissues, or cells; how they enter the cell and disassemble; and how newly synthesized viral components assemble and mature to form progeny viruses. He has studied single-stranded RNA rhino- (common cold), coxsackie-, polio-, and cardioviruses as well as the enveloped toga- and flaviviruses; single-stranded DNA human, canine, feline, and porcine parvoviruses and the bacterial fX174 virus; and the double-stranded DNA tailed f29 and T4 bacteriophages.
