Prof Emeritus of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Oregon State University
Corvallis
Oregon 97331

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When Prof. Gregorio Weber arrived at the University of Illinois in the fall of 1962, I was in the middle of my doctoral thesis project in Prof. Carl Vestling's lab. Prof. Vestling had told me about Gregorio Weber, saying that he would be interested in some of the things that we were doing with dehydrogenases. I soon learned that Prof. Weber was to be one of my graduate committee members.

 

I sat in on his lectures, for which I still have notes, and performed some measurements in his fluorescence lab. After completing my PhD with Prof. Vestling in 1964, Prof. Weber invited me to become a postdoc in his lab, where I was to remain for two and one-half years.

 

He was always interested in what I was doing, maintaining just the right amount of contact while allowing me a great deal freedom in my projects. We published papers on coenzyme binding studies, on reversible enzyme dissociation, and on the contribution of energy transfer to fluorescence polarization measurements (red edge effects).

 

Socially, I found both Gregorio and his wife Shirley to be kind and generous. About two years after my joining his group, Prof. Weber advised me that having completed both the PhD and the postdoc at the same university could be a disadvantage in obtaining an academic position. I thus .decided to spend a year in Prof. Eraldo Antonini's lab in Rome.

 

When I returned to the states, Prof. Weber helped me to obtain a temporary teaching position at Illinois, from which I launched a daunting search for an assistant professorship. With the help of letters from Profs Vestling, Weber, and Antonini, I received several offers and finally decided to come to Oregon State University, where I remained for 38 years.

 

I have always remembered the value that Prof. Weber placed on doing things that are new and interesting. Fluorescence spectroscopy, with its versatility, has remained one of my principal techniques. I have found friends of Prof. Weber everywhere that I have gone: Rome, Oregon State, and beyond.