Passing of Warren DeLano
I regret to inform you of the passing of Dr. Warren Lyford DeLano. Warren passed suddenly Tuesday morning on November 3rd, 2009.
Although the crystallographic community is small. I did not have the pleasure of knowing Warren personally. However, I wanted to express my sincere appreciation for his scientific contributions.
Warren was the developer behind the molecular graphics program called PyMol. I have written numerous posts about PyMol since it is truly one of the best molecular graphics programs.
I have had a love/hate relationship with PyMol, but one thing that I never questioned was Warren’s dedication in helping others. Warren set up his own forum just to help others with questions that they had about PyMol. Warren was also a leader in the open source movement within crystallography.
My wishes sincere condolences to Warren’s family.
A website has been setup by the Delano family. They have asked for all memories be posted at that location, thank you.
Written by Axel T. Brunger
Dear friends and colleagues:
It’s now been over a week since Warren has passed away. We are trying to move toward a permanent way to honor Warren’s memory and what he stood for: Open Source Computational Biosciences and molecular visualization. To do this, Jim Wells and I put together a mission statement with the approval of Warren’s family:
The Warren L. DeLano Memorial Award for Computational Biosciences
This award shall be given to a top computational bioscientist in recognition of the contributions made by Warren L. DeLano to creating powerful visualization tools for three dimensional structures and making them freely accessible. The award, accompanying lecture, and honorium will be given annually in the context of a national bioscience meeting or a Bay Area gathering of computational bioscientists at Stanford, UCSF or UC Berkeley. For the award special emphasis will be given for Open Source developments and service to the bioscience community.
The award selection committee, consisting of experts in the computational and biological sciences, will accept nominations from anyone..
To make something like this happen in perpetuity would take about ~100K for the endowment.
For donations, Warren’s family has set up a tax deductible fund:
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
memo: Warren L. DeLano Memorial Fund
2440 West El Camino Real, Suite 300
Mountain View, CA 94040
tel: 650.450.5400
We hope that you’ll consider making a contribution (not matter how small) in Warren’s honor. Also, please forward this message to anybody who might be able be willing to contribute.
Best regards,
Axel
**Update**
Fred notes:
For those of you who may worry about the future and future availability of PyMol, this is the information I have received from Elizabeth Pehrson (Warren’s wife, DeLano Scientific LLC):
“I would like to reassure all who fear for PyMOL’s future that DeLano Scientific still exists, we are still accepting (and receiving) subscriptions, we are still providing maintenance and support, and I am working closely with some of Warren’s most trusted developers to plan for the future of PyMOL”.
**Update**
Obituary by Axel Brunger and Jim Wells in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
I will update this post as I hear more information.
ChemSpiderman
November 5th, 2009 at 8:05 PM #
I had never met Warren but in the one phone conversation we had he had I immediately connected with him. He was clearly a brilliant man .
Jennifer DeLano
November 6th, 2009 at 12:56 AM #
Thank you for the lovely post about my brother.
I had no idea of his wide influence.
Thank you.
Jennifer
Geoffrey Hutchison
November 6th, 2009 at 10:30 AM #
Jennifer, I think you will find many posts about Warren in the next few days. His influence and enthusiasm was infectious.
I know many in the community, including myself, will find ways to honor him.
Sean
November 6th, 2009 at 12:55 PM #
I am going to close the comments to encourage others to post at the family’s website (see post). However, if you need to contact me, feel free to drop me an email.