Anecdotal , Historical and Critical Commentaries on Genetics Edited by James F . Crow and William F . Dove Ira Herskowitz : 1946 – 2003

AS a rule, we geneticists do not pay very much attention posed while the twins were still students. He also wrote his own songs, which contained perceptive and witty to intellectual history. Occasionally something happens that causes us to think, if only briefly, about the vignettes of life in the major leagues of academic science in the late twentieth century. Ira occasionally performed intellectual roots of our science. One such event was the premature death of Ira Herskowitz in April of 2003 these songs at meetings, especially in later years. Everyat the age of 56. Through his scientific discoveries, and the body looked forward to them, even though we knew all uniquely elegant and effective way in which he conveyed the words already. So it was with lectures; Ira’s skill in them in person and in print, Ira had a profound and delivery made even the most basic or elementary ideas formative effect on the way in which all biologists today (the central dogma, regulation, or the lac operon) fresh think about and describe genetic regulatory circuits and and interesting for old pro and novice alike. mechanisms. Ira was a dedicated and effective teacher all his life Ira had a great ear for colloquial language, especially (Figure 2). Some of his extraordinary teaching style was the language of sports. So it is appropriate to sum up derived from his egalitarian instinct and temperament his career by saying that from its very beginning to its and some, no doubt, from his tradition. He made perpremature end, Ira was a franchise player in the major sonal connections and talked as easily with the dishleagues of genetics. Not everybody will remember that, washer or janitor as he did with the graduate student while still a graduate student, Ira contributed one of or professor. Ira’s tradition was academic genetics: his the major pieces to our understanding of the logic of father Irwin was a Drosophila geneticist (a former sturegulation in the bacteriophage . Ira’s phage work dent of H. J. Muller, who in turn had studied with T. H. established him as a pioneer in molecular genetics. Morgan), well known for his teaching and a successful (Figure 1) was the first organism whose regulatory stratecollege-level genetics textbook. Ira excelled in talking gies became well understood; the themes and lessons to nonscientists and students, but he also had a special of genetics resonate in all of modern genetics. Much knack for finding new ways of making the value of genetbetter known are Ira’s many subsequent contributions to basic understanding of the molecular genetics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which in time, partly as a consequence of Ira’s work, became the premier experimental organism for eukaryotic regulatory studies. Any description of the basis for Ira’s influence must take into account his extraordinary personality and communication skills. Ira was legendary for the clarity and humor with which he could convey often complicated ideas and experimental results. But this observation does not begin to convey his charisma. Ira loved music and loved to perform, especially his twin brother Joel’s composition “The Double-Talking Helix Blues,” com-