Henk Spekreijse (1940–2006)

Henk Spekreijse suffered a fatal heart attack in Amsterdam on 20 October 2006. From 1991 to 2004 Henk was chairman of the board and editor in chief of Vision Research. Under his guidance the journal flourished and expanded to 28 issues per year. He worked with Elsevier to introduce and fund the pre-ARVO special symposia and initiated the publication of special issues of the journal, which bring together scientists from different disciplines to discuss questions of high interest in vision research. In parallel with his life in research he played a major administrative role in the international development of vision research. Within Europe, he was instrumental in establishing the Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute as the focus of collaboration between sixteen ophthalmology departments in The Netherlands and Belgium, and served as director of research at that Institute. Spekreijse has long been recognised as one of the outstanding visual researchers of his time. His was a large laboratory, scientific home over the years for many postdoctoral fellows and over fifty Ph.D. students. A remarkable number became well-known scientists with their own laboratories. In 1985 he was elected Fellow of the Nether-