In Memoriam Harold W. Rossmoore (1925-2003): a personal view.

The 13th International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation Symposium (IBBS) will be the first to be held without Prof. Harold W. Rossmoore. Beginning with the first symposium, in Southampton, UK in 1968, his presence has been felt at every single meeting. He even participated in a meeting, held in London, UK in 1965, that is considered to be the starting point for the International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation Society. Although, due to his poor health, he was unable to attend the 12th IBBS, held in Prague in 2002, he contributed a lecture, which one of his collaborators, Mohammed Sondossi, read on his behalf. Not only did Prof. Rossmoore participate in all IBBS, but he also organized two of them: the 8th Symposium (Windsor, Ontario, Canada, 1990), and the 11th Symposium (Arlington, Virginia, USA, 1999), both of which were extremely successful. Professor Harold W. Rossmoore died on July 28, 2003. His death has been a great loss to many people, including myself, and a huge loss for the IBBS, due to his long and meritorious service to the Society and its journal. It will be difficult, if not impossible to find someone who can match Prof. Rossmoore in his devotion and dedication to the IBBS. I first met Harold in 1991, when he delivered the opening lecture at the 1st Symposium on Biodeterioration in Spain. The symposium was organized by the Biodeterioration Group of the Spanish Society for Microbiology (SEM), which I led, and took place in Madrid. Our friendship grew over the years, as did my deep admiration for him. The obituary written by Prof. Brian Flannigan, for the International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation Journal (IBBJ) (2004, 54:81-85), ended with the following quote: “We can pay no finer or more apposite tribute than by echoing the elegant words of Rabbi Loss of Temple Israel [West Bloomfield, Michigan, USA; where Harold taught religious school students for a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s], who said of him ‘He was a scientist, but of even greater significance he was a mentsh’, a person who combined kindness, responsibility, and dignity.” I could not agree more with those words. Harold’s charismatic personality attracted many different kinds of people. He was very special to me with respect to our professional lives since we had many things in common. We both finished high school very young, we both had a degree in Pharmaceutical Science, and we were both Registered Pharmacists. Later on, both of us obtained a PhD in Microbiology and received Fulbright scholarships; he, as an American, spent one year working in Spain, and I, as a Spaniard, spent one year working in the US. We both eventually became professors of Microbiology. Later, he became the first non-British president of the International Biodeterioration Society, and, a few years later, I became the first person from a non-English-speaking country to become president of the same Society. Harold and his family lived in Madrid in 1965, during which time he became enamored with Spain. Whenever he had the professional opportunity to come back to Spain, he Fernando Laborda