In memoriam – Alan Hall

Abstract

ABSTRACT On May 3 of this year, cell biology lost a giant with the untimely passing of Alan Hall (Fig. 1). Alan didn't discover the Rho family of GTPases but, more than anyone else, he and his laboratory brought these key regulatory proteins to the prominent position that they now occupy. I first met Alan in the early 1990s shortly after his landmark papers with Anne Ridley were published (Ridley and Hall, 1992; Ridley et al., 1992). Over the years our interests frequently overlapped, we met often at conferences and became friends. Ultimately, we became collaborators, each of us directing projects within a Program Project Grant that is headed by Klaus Hahn, and that also includes Gaudenz Danuser and John Sondek. Shortly before his death we had been in conversation about this grant and were discussing when we would next get together as a group. I was looking forward to seeing him again, not only because I enjoyed his company but because I always learned something new from every interaction. Other obituaries have covered Alan Hall's career, research accomplishments and service to the research community, such as being Chair of Cell Biology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cell Biology. Here, I wish to share my perspective on his enormous contribution to the Rho GTPase field, particularly focusing on the decade of the 1990s when he and his laboratory thrust Rho GTPases to the forefront of cell biology.