In Memoriam: Michael B. Gregg (1930–2008)

e has in his make-up two essential elements— common sense and the will to work ... in collecting [facts] he is diligent, patient, careful, thorough and unbiased ... he avoids needless or obfuscating high mathematics and formulae ... he does not twist the facts... He remains broad-minded and open-minded ... He is humble in his ignorance but bold in his search for truth " (1). So wrote legendary American epidemiologist Leslie Lumsden (1875–1946). He was responding to the question, posed by the American Journal of Public Health in 1942, " What and who is an epidemiologist? " (1). Michael B. Gregg, MD, who died on July 9 in Brat-tleboro, Vermont, was a 12-year-old boy in 1942 when Lumsden described the quintessential epidemiologist. But Gregg (or Mike, as just about everyone at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] called him) grew up to become not only an epidemiologist but also a teacher, a mentor, a friend, and for many the embodiment of Lums-den's ideal. Among the many hundreds of students Gregg taught and infl uenced at the National Institutes of Health, and most notably at CDC, are countless leaders in epidemiology , public health, and the biomedical sciences. They practice all over the country, in health departments, in universities , in federal agencies, and indeed around the world. Roger Bernier, an epidemiologist who trained under Gregg at CDC, has compared Gregg's professional approach to one of his hobbies: gardening. He planted, he nurtured, and he took care of and kept an eye on things; as the garden fl ourished, he kept it in bloom by careful but unobtrusive attention, preventive maintenance, and teaching and inspiring others to pitch in and help. Mike's textbook, Field Epidemiology (2), remains the authoritative work on outbreak investigations and the " shoe leather " approach to public health problem solving. It refl ects not only his style but also his unparalleled experiences in national and international epidemiology. Between the mid-1960s and 1990, when he retired from CDC, Mike was often in the eye of the hurricane, presiding as deputy director over CDC's Bureau of Epidemiology during many of the most memorable outbreak investigations of the past century. These included Pontiac fever/Legionnaires' dis-He also helped put on the epidemiology map such new diseases as Reye syndrome (1973–1977), Kawasaki disease (1977), and toxic-shock syndrome (1980). And he helped steer us into an era of control (and …