Obituary: Dick van der Helm, an internationally recognized siderophore researcher and a crystallographer

Abstract

Professor Dick van der Helm, one of the pioneers of the structural siderophore field, passed away on April 28, 2010, aged 77. Dick was born on March 16, 1933 in Velsen, the Netherlands and after completing his regular primary and secondary school education he enrolled at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained the Dutch equivalents of the Bachelors and Masters degrees in 1952 and 1956, respectively. He then worked abroad at Indiana University for a number of years but he briefly returned to his alma mater to obtain his Doctoral degree in crystallography in 1960. Of particular importance during his further crystallography training were the postdoctoral years from 1959 to 1962 which he spent working with Lindo Patterson at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia. During this time important computer programs for the analysis of crystallographic data were developed that have since been used extensively by numerous scientists worldwide. Dick has worked for most of his career (from 1962 to 2002) at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he was a highly valued member of the Chemistry department. He rapidly rose through the ranks and he was appointed as a George Lynn Cross Research Professor in 1977; this is the highest research honor that a faculty member can receive from the University of Oklahoma, and it reflects Dicks’ national and international recognition over a number of years. Dick has also been a recipient of an NIH Career development award from 1969 to 1974 and the Oklahoma Scientist award in 1980. Shortly after moving to Norman, Oklahoma, Dick became fascinated by the structures of siderophores and related iron-chelating compounds. His research group has purified and structurally characterized many different siderophores and through this work they have helped to firmly establish the chemical features and the preferred coordination chemistry that characterize a potent naturally occurring iron chelator that can be used to fulfill the need for the essential element iron of micro-organisms such as bacteria or fungi. Glancing over Dick’s publication record from the 1960’s, 1970’s and the early 1980’s reads like a ‘Who’s Who of the ferric-siderophore world’ as we H. J. Vogel (&) University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada e-mail: vogel@ucalgary.ca