The sad news that Thomas Steitz passed away in early October of this year spread quickly through the scientific community, as it tends to do when a field loses one of its trailblazers. Tom was a true pioneer and a maverick in the field of structural biology, and he pushed the boundaries of the types of biological problems that could be investigated. His scientific contributions are now part of every undergraduate biochemistry textbook. After hearing of Tom’s passing, colleagues asked me in disbelief whether it was true, but at the same time we all were aware that Tom’s scientific legacy will live on.
Thomas Steitz was born in Milwaukee in 1940. He studied chemistry at Lawrence College as an undergraduate and then pursued his PhD studies at Harvard University with William Lipscomb. There, he also met his future wife, fellow scientist Joan Argetsinger, who was at the time a PhD student in the lab of James Watson. The two were equally brilliant scientists, and Joan herself later became one of the most prominent figures in the field of RNA biology. Tom and Joan next moved together to the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where Tom joined the laboratory of David Blow for his postdoctoral studies. In 1970, Tom established his own group at Yale and later became Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1990, his research accomplishments were recognized with one of the highest honors in science when he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
